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WILSON 

AND THE ISSUES 



WILSON 

AND THE ISSUES 



BY 



GEORGE CREEL 




NEW YORK 

THE CENTURY CO. 

1916 






Copyright, 1916, by 
The Century Co. 

Published, September, 1916 



SEP 14 1916 



'CI.A438357 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I Democracy's Test ..... 3 

II Mexico 10 

III Belgium and the Lusitania . .34 

IV '^ National Honor" 46 

V Manufacturing Hysteria ... 57 

VI The National Defense .... 72 

VII The Case of Josephus Daniels . 88 

VIII '^ America First" Ill 

IX "Anything TO Beat Wilson" . . 129 

X The Ancient Faith 147 



WILSON 
AND THE ISSUES 



WILSON 
AND THE ISSUES 

CHAPTER I 

DEMOCRACY'S TEST 

WITH the possible exception of 1860, 
the Presidential campaign of 1916 
presents issues of larger importance and 
more tremendous meaning than any other 
in the history of America. The ultimates 
involved go far beyond the mere individual 
victory or defeat of Woodrow Wilson and 
Charles Evans Hughes, for on the deci- 
sions that must be made depends the whole 
future of democracy. It is not simply a 
President of the United States that the 
people are called upon to elect ; it is funda- 
mental policies for the United States that 
the people are called upon to declare. 

3 



4 Wilson and the Issues 

There was never a time when the bigot- 
ries of partizanship were more akin to trea- 
son and betrayal ; never a time when there 
was such imperative demand npon the 
electorate for clear, nnimpassioned think- 
ing. Where tragedy may lie is in the fact 
that all the dynamic forces of the day are 
driving in the direction of confusion, prej- 
udice, and stark emotionalism. Not since 
the fever of the sixties has the voice of the 
people been louder and less intelligible. 
At every turn, when it seemed that some ex- 
pression of popular sentiment might come 
clear and sane and strong, a new excite- 
ment has arisen to restore babel. 

A vital factor in the turmoil, and one that 
calls for initial comprehension, is the pe- 
culiar, yet definite, change in the public 
mind that took place as a consequence of 
the continuance of the European War. 
In the first horror of it all, when daily tid- 
ings of wholesale slaughter shocked Ameri- 
cans into renewed appreciation of the bless- 
ings of peace, the sentiment was unanimous 
that the United States ^^must keep out." 



Democracy's Test 5 

Sensibilities dulled, however, and as a 
very natural result of staled imaginations, 
the American mind soon failed to react to 
European despatches that told of a hundred 
thousand sons and fathers killed, a hundred 
thousand homes destroyed. It was not 
that our emotions became calloused ; simply 
that our emotions became numbed. For- 
mer habits of life and thought, reasserting 
themselves inevitably, restored the old 
selfishness and all the old prejudices. 

A certain unity, bred by common revul- 
sion against the insanity of conflict, be- 
gan to disintegrate under the influences of 
the partizanship stirred by that conflict; 
the silence of tragedy gave way to the noise 
of recrimination; ugly distrusts and sus- 
picions developed; and a vast irritability 
gained ground. In a word, peace got on 
the nerves of America. 

There can be no question that the moral 
courage of neutrality is colorless indeed 
when compared with the physical courage 
of war; when all the world is at one an- 
other's throats, inactivity is bound to take 



6 Wilson and the Issues 

on an appearance of ignobility. Pro- Al- 
lies began to damn us as poltroons for not 
adopting some aggressive course that 
would cripple Germany, and pro-Germans 
berated us as cravens for not taking some 
aggressive course that would harass Eng- 
land; and between the two attacks Ameri- 
can pride was rubbed to the raw. 

It was not war that was desired — even 
the noisiest disavowed such urgency — and 
yet the average mind surged to a restless- 
ness compounded of wounded vanity and 
suppressed truculence. President Wilson, 
unable to hit upon a course of action that 
would afford all the excitement and re- 
clame of war without the bloodshed and 
desolation of war, naturally fell into dis- 
favor. He guarded the United States 
against the ultimate crime, but failed to 
find a soothing salve for the egotism of 
the United States. 

Mexican outrages, coming at this junc- 
ture, were as salt in our wounds. Ques- 
tions of right and wrong, consideration of 
facts, and due regard for the established 



Democracy's Test 7 

procedure of redress — all were swept away 
by a rush of wild anger. Here at last was 
an open enemy, giving the chance to un- 
leash our fury and to vindicate the cour- 
age of America. The Villa raids, as a 
matter of fact, merely put a torch to the 
smoldering rages that had been piling high 
as a result of the European situation. 

This yeasty ferment, left to itself, would 
have bubbled awhile and quieted, but it 
so happened that certain great groups, as 
powerful as they were sinister, as cunning 
as they were unscrupulous, saw political 
opportunity in this general impatience, ir- 
ritability, and dissatisfaction. Exagger- 
ating, exasperating, magnifying incidents 
into events, and grievances into unbearable 
wrongs, stirring every pool of prejudice, 
and beating the gongs of alarm, they have 
given the campaign the note that is to 
their liking. 

National vanity is to be a dominant issue, 
and neither money nor political skill will 
be spared to prove that the President's de- 
votion to peace has shamed us as a nation 



8 Wilson and the Issues 

and heaped humiliation upon every individ- 
ual head. The dead children of the Lusi- 
tania will be dragged from the ocean bed, 
and the bodies of Villa's victims loaded 
upon campaign carts for oratorical pur- 
poses. Bonfires of jingoism will be lighted 
in every market-place, so that the flame of 
an unreasoning emotionalism may bury all 
else in shadow. It is the intent to keep the 
people so busy feeling that they will have 
no time for thinking. 

Fundamental issues will be hidden, bur- 
ied from sight by flubdub. As far as may 
be possible, there will be avoidance of all 
industrial, social, and economic questions, 
entire emphasis being placed upon direct 
appeals to the passions of human nature 
that have their roots in anger, prejudice, 
and hysteria. If it is in the power of or- 
ganized cunning to compass it, every voter 
will enter the polling-place with Belgium 
and Mexico so firmly fixed in mind that 
there will not be room for a single domes- 
tic problem. 

The whole situation constitutes a test 



Democracy's Test 9 

of democracy. It is the capacity of a 
people for self-government that is on trial. 
It is the honesty, intelligence, and faith of 
the mass that are up for judgment. There 
is not a lie that has been told that lacks 
its answer ; there is not a slander for which 
refutation cannot be found ; there is not an 
ugly charge that does not come clean in the 
light of truth. It remains to be seen 
whether the people of the United States 
prefer facts to clamor, fairness to be- 
trayal, and democracy to oligarchy; in a 
word, whether they are able to think for 
themselves. 



CHAPTER II 

MEXICO 

THE whole Mexican matter, from Diaz 
to Carranza, is a singularly forceful 
example of the manner in which hysteria 
can work forgetfulness of established facts. 
During the Taf t administration there was a 
clamor for intervention even as now, and 
Senator Stone, a Democrat, took the usual 
partizan advantage of an opportunity to 
make political capital out of a crisis. 
Speaking against the Stone resolution from 
the floor of the Senate, Elihu Root laid 
down this statement of the administration 
attitude : 

Granting that injuries have been done to 

American citizens that ought to be redressed; 

that wounds have been inflicted, that lives have 

been taken, that property has been destroyed, it 

does not follow, sir, that we should begin the 

10 



Mexico 11 

process of securing redress for those injuries by 
a threat of force on the part of a great and power- 
ful nation against a smaller and weaker nation. 
That, sir, is to reverse the policy of the United 
States and to take a step backward in the path- 
way of civilization. There is no reason what- 
ever, sir, to assume, if injuries have been done of 
the kind described, that the government of 
Mexico is unwilling to make due redress upon 
having those injuries and claims presented to her 
in the ordinary course of peaceful negotiations. 
. . . Sympathy with the people of Mexico in 
their distress, a just sense of the duties that we 
owe to that friendly people, and the duties that 
we owe to the peace of the world, must forbid our 
assenting to or yielding to any such course. 

This has been the attitude of President 
Wilson from the first, nor has he suffered 
any of the sudden changes that political am- 
bitious have worked in Mr. Root. Nor 
has public misconception of this attitude 
been due to any of the generous instincts 
aroused naturally by Belgium's desolation 
or the horror of the Lusitania. Back of 
the Mexican outcry lie the huge stakes 
gambled for by American concessionaires, 
and the insistence upon intervention 



12 Wilson and the Issues 

springs from a desire to have profits guar- 
anteed far more than from any interest in 
American lives. 

A judge would be shamed for sitting in 
a case where one of the litigants was his 
secret client, and yet Senator Fall, even 
while admitting his huge interests in Mex- 
ican concessions, does not scruple to de- 
mand the employment of the army of the 
United States where that would insure 
their protection. Mr. Hearst, whose 
papers have contributed more to hate and 
hysteria than any other agency, also 
possesses tremendous investments in Mex- 
ico that he seems to put above American 
principles and the struggle for liberty of 
an enslaved, oppressed people. 

From the very first, foreign interference 
has contributed as largely to Mexican dis- 
order as internal revolution. Documen- 
tary evidence is coming to light that proves 
the Mondragon-Eeyes-Diaz plot against 
Madero to have been hatched with the full 
knowledge of Americans; it now stands 
admitted that Huerta died with German 



Mexico 13 

money in his pockets, and as far back as 
December, 1915, the inner circles of Wash- 
ington buzzed with the news that it had 
been arranged for Villa to kill Americans 
on their own soil in order to force the 
intervention that greed demanded. 

The Mexican issue is one that deserves 
to be understood clearly, not so much in 
the interest of Woodrow Wilson as in the 
larger interest of the American people, 
whose most sacred ideals are at stake. It 
is not a story to be told in bold slashes, 
however, but a painstaking chronicle of 
facts. First of all, there must be com- 
prehension of the rule of Diaz the Magnif- 
icent not as a republic, but as a despot- 
ism ; not as a shining exliibition of law and 
order, but as one of the world's most ter- 
rible examples of armed oppression. 

In a country of fifteen millions, ten thou- 
sand owned every inch of the land ; lack of 
public schools doomed generation after gen- 
eration to ignorance and illiteracy; the 
toilers of the nation were serfs, compelled 
to labor all their lives under laws that 



14 Wilson and the Issues 

legitimized slavery and oppression; and 
from birth to death the great mass of 
Mexican people bowed under the weight of 
a vast hopelessness, a paralyzing despair. 

The wonderful natural resources of the 
land — for Mexico has been called the 
*' treasure-house of the world '^ — were not 
used for the happiness and advancement of 
the fifteen millions, but became stakes to be 
gambled for by rapacity and corruption. 
The contracts by which the Pearson group 
obtained their oil rights were of such a 
character that Lord Charles Beresford 
branded them as disgraceful. Not satisfied 
with their oil privileges, the Cowdray in- 
terests seized two and half million hectares 
of land, and ports, railways, and franchises 
of every kind. Americans, seeing the rich 
prizes to be gained, deserted the develop- 
ment of their own country, and entered into 
arrangements with Diaz and his corrupt 
associates for the seizure of oil, timber, 
salt, and mineral rights. 

Popular protest was impossible. The 
country was divided into districts, and each 



Mexico 15 

district was ruled by a jefe politico , respon- 
sible only to the Federal Government and 
with unlimited power, controlling the po- 
lice, drawing recruits for the army, super- 
vising elections — the agent, in fact, by 
which a central tyranny was able to work 
out its plans in detail and make them appli- 
cable to any part of the country without 
consideration of local authority or public 
sentiment. 

A prophet came, — a magician, if you 
will, — for at the very shout of ' ' Justice ! ' ' 
that he raised, the Diaz dynasty, seemingly 
impregnable, crumbled and fell. Indubi- 
tably it was a dream that held Francisco 
Madero, for freedom and justice have ever 
been dream words far removed from the 
sordid mathematics of '^practical men.'' 
The fact remains, however, that he was put- 
ting foundations under his dream when out 
of a clear sky came a revolt that was not 
the revolt of the Mexican people, but a 
murderous uprising of janizaries, quick- 
ened to treachery and assassination by 
alien plotters. 



16 Wilson and the Issues 

There can be small doubt that a practical 
President would have recognized Huerta, 
for it was obviously the course dictated by 
self-interest as well as by the surface fer- 
ment of public opinion. Backed by the ap- 
proval of the United States, the dictator 
could have strengthened himself in such 
manner as to restore a semblance of peace 
and to protect American concessions, requi- 
sites that would have permitted the Presi- 
dent to wash his hands in approved Pilate 
style. 

Judged by every fact in the case, Wood- 
row Wilson's repudiation of Huerta was in 
no sense the result of a carefully reasoned 
determination, but unmistakably the in- 
stinctive recoil of the democratic spirit. 
Mental processes are never free from the 
impingements of self-interest. It is only 
in the unthinking passions of idealism that 
there is found the courage to do the right 
thing rather than that which is expedient 
and opportunistic. 

While recognition of Huerta was the 
wise course, as practicality defines wisdom. 



Mexico 17 

it was not the right course. The acknowl- 
edgment that he asked involved a sanction 
of assassination and acquiescence in the 
legitimacy of murder as a substitute for 
constitutional procedure. 

The issue was clean-cut then, and it 
stands clean-cut to-day. Not all the an- 
gers and vexations of the years can cloud 
it. To have taken the hand of the drunken, 
brutal assassin, wet with the blood of his 
benefactor, would have announced to the 
world that America had reached the point 
where nothing but the basest greed had 
power to move or determine ; would have 
confessed to every citizen that self-respect - 
was no longer essential. 

Aside from the assertion of moral and 
spiritual integrity, however, the denial of 
Huerta is now seen to have had other and 
more material advantages. Had he been 
recognized as despot, he would have re- 
stored the tyrannies of Diaz and continued 
the slavery of the people, thus adding new 
terrors to the day of reckoning that was 
bound to come. He died in the pay of 



18 Wilson and the Issues 

Germany, and as dictator he would have 
lived at the disposal of his European pa- 
tron, an ever-present menace to our peace. 

Whether it is considered as a challenge 
to sordidness and an affirmation of ancient 
faith or as an intelligent refusal to legiti- 
mize a peril. President Wilson's rejection 
of Huerta stands as a great and splendid 
act, and those who attack him on this 
ground betray themselves beyond ex- 
planation. 

If further proof were needed of Wood- 
row Wilson's devotion to democratic 
ideals, it is furnished by his attitude in 
those trying days when ^ 'watchful waiting" 
provided laughter for cynics and an open 
avenue of attack for jingoes and concession- 
aires. With almost incredible hypocrisy, 
intervention was urged '4n the interests of 
civilization" by the very class most re- 
sponsible for industrial strife in Colorado, 
West Virginia, and Michigan, for the child- 
labor horror, for housing evils, and the 
existence of slums. 



Mexico 19 

Nothing could have been more skilful 
than the fashion in which these conces- 
sionaires, working through a venal press 
and equally venal public men, identified 
their threatened profits with *Hhe nation ^s 
honor/' Jingoes were aroused, likewise 
those whose only estimate of national 
greatness lies in military achievement, also 
the youth of the country, with youth 's usual 
reckless passion for adventure. 

There is every certainty that in the 
beginning intervention would have been 
supported unstintedly by the people. 
Even as we have seen the socialists of Eu- 
rope, pledged to peace, swept away by high 
tides of racial feeling, so would every paci- 
fist protest in the United States been 
drowned out by the boom of the first Amer- 
ican gun. War is always glorious until the 
lists of dead and wounded begin to come, 
and it must be remembered also that for 
years it had been the custom for public men 
to soothe the people with the laudanum of 
brag and bluster. 



20 Wilson and the Issues 

The President's speech at Mobile eam6 
as more than any mere explanation of pol- 
icy ; it flamed forth as the most illuminating 
exposition of the spirit of democracy since 
Lincoln bared his soul at Gettysburg : 

Human rights, national integrity, and oppor- 
tunity as against material interests — that is the 
issue we have to face. . . . This is not America 
because it is rich. This is not America because it 
has set up for a great population great oppor- 
tunities for material prosperity. America is a 
name which sormds in the ears of men every- 
where as a synonym with individual oppor- 
tunity because a synonym of individual liberty. 
I would rather belong to a poor nation that was 
free than to a rich nation that had ceased to be 
in love with liberty. ... Do not think that the 
questions of the day are mere questions of policy 
and diplomacy. They are shot through with the 
principles of life. We dare not turn from the 
principle that morality and not expediency is the 
thing that must guide us, and that we will never 
condone iniquity because it is most convenient 
to do so. 

Again, in his Indianapolis speech, he 
flung this challenge of democracy full in the 
teeth of jingoes and concessionaires : 



Mexico 21 

I hold it as a fundamental principle, and so 
do you, that every people has the right to deter- 
mine its own form of government, and until this 
recent revolution in Mexico, until the end of the 
Diaz reign, eighty per cent, of the people of 
Mexico never had a look-in in determining who 
should be their governors or what their govern- 
ment should be. 

It is none of my business, and it is none of 
your business, how long they take in determining 
it. It is none of my business, and it is none of 
yours, how they go about the business. The 
country is theirs, the government is theirs, and 
the liberty, if they can get it, — and God speed 
them in getting it ! — is theirs, and so far as my 
influence goes, while I am President, nobody shall 
interfere with it. 

Have n 't the European nations taken as long 
as they wanted and spilled as much blood as they 
pleased in settling their affairs ? Shall we deny 
that to Mexico because she is weak? 

It was at the moment of extreme tension 
that the Tampico incident occurred to 
harass and complicate. More than any 
other one thing this has been seized upon by 
the forces of falsehood and prejudice, Mr. 
Boot declaring it to have been a carefully 



22 Wilson and the Issues 

planned move against Huerta, others 
branding it as mad and needless, and still 
others reserving their mendacity for the 
charge that American ships were with- 
drawn at a time of danger, forcing Ameri- 
can citizens to seek refuge under foreign 
flags. These are the facts: 

On April 9, 1914, the Huerta officials at 
Tampico arrested the whale-boat crew of 
the Dolphin, and Admiral Mayo, in addi- 
tion to the release of the men, demanded a 
salute to the flag by way of apology. The 
ultimatum was delivered without Washing- 
ton's knowledge or authorization, the Ad- 
miral exercising his own judgment in the 
emergency, just as Dewey did at Manila 
Bay. Instantly the whole question shifted 
from one of fixed policy, and centered about 
the decision as to whether Admiral Mayo 
should be repudiated or upheld. Whatever 
may have been his personal feeling in the 
matter, President Wilson did not hesitate 
to throw the full power of the United States 
in support of the Admiral's action. 

Under Admiral Mayo at Tampico were 



Mexico 23 

the Dolphin, Des Moines, Chester, Connect- 
icut, Minnesota, San Francisco, the trans- 
port Hancock, the hospital-ship Solace, 
and the collier Cyclops. Under Admiral 
Fletcher at Vera Cruz were the battle-ships 
Florida and Utah and the transport Prai- 
rie. As ranking officer, Admiral Fletcher 
was in full command, and never at any 
time did Admiral Mayo communicate 
directly with Washington, reporting 
throughout to Fletcher. To reinforce the 
fleets in Mexican waters, Admiral Badger, 
with the Atlantic squadron, was ordered on 
April 13 to sail from Hampton Roads. 

After the initial excitement, affairs at 
Tampico quieted, and, on April 14, Ad- 
miral Fletcher advised Washington as 
follows: '' Rebels abandoned attack on 
Tampico and withdrew. The six hundred 
refugees on board ships there have been 
returned to their homes, business is re- 
sumed, and conditions there again appear 
normal.'* On April 15 he reported, 
** Slight skirmishes in outer trenches'' ; on 
April 16 he did not communicate ; on April 



24 Wilson and the Issues 

17 he declared, '^All quiet''; on April 18, 
** Condition unchanged''; and on April 19, 
**No new developments at Tampico." 

In the meantime Washington was press- 
ing for the apology that Huerta evaded. 
A possible reason for his delay was the ex- 
pected arrival at Vera Cruz of the German 
steamer Ypiranga, bearing a great cargo of 
arms and ammunition. To punish Huerta 
for his continued defiance of the Mayo ulti- 
matum, Washington decided to seize the 
custom-house, and if the delivery of the 
Ypiranga's cargo was to be prevented, the 
seizure had to be made before the steamer's 
arrival. As a consequence, the order went 
to Admiral Fletcher on April 20. 

Vera Cruz was now the center of opera- 
tions. Guided by this, Secretary Daniels' 
military advisers suggested that he order 
Mayo to Vera Cruz with all his ships except 
the Des Moines. The reason was that Ad- 
miral Fletcher's battle-ships were com- 
pelled to lie five miles out at sea, while 
Mayo's light-draft vessels would be able 
to enter the harbor. Not only did daily 



Mexico 25 

reports show that conditions were normal 
at Tampico, but Admiral Badger, with the 
Atlantic squadron, was only a few hours 
away from that port. 

In the twinkling of an eye conditions 
changed. Almost in the moment that Mayo 
was reading his order to proceed to Vera 
Cruz, Tampico experienced a new outbreak 
that menaced life and property. Natu- 
rally enough. Admiral Mayo sent a wireless 
message to Admiral Fletcher, telling him 
of the explosion, and suggesting that he be 
allowed to remain. With equal common 
sense, Admiral Fletcher applied his own 
decisions to the emergency. Getting into 
communication with Admiral Badger, then 
at a point equidistant from both Tampico 
and Vera Cruz, he asked that the Atlantic 
squadron change its destination and come 
to Vera Cruz. This request approved, he 
gave orders to Mayo to send him the San 
Francisco and the Chester at full speed, 
but to remain at Tampico with the rest of 
his ships. 

As the naval experts had foreseen, these 



26 Wilson and the Issues 

light-draft vessels from Mayors fleet made 
possible the quick and decisive occupation 
of Vera Cruz, entering the harbor to pro- 
tect the landing-parties, and shelling the 
buildings that held snipers. From Badg- 
er's battle-ships poured the marines that 
gave Fletcher his necessary land strength. 
While these things were happening at 
Vera Cruz, Admiral Mayo, lying at the 
mouth of the Panuco Eiver, six miles 
from Tampico, was considering the prob- 
lem of saving human life. Had Amer- 
icans been concentrated in Tampico, 
his task would have been simple, but 
there were many foreigners of various 
nationalities scattered throughout the 
entire oil-region, far removed from the 
protection of Mayors guns. The captains 
of the English and German warships made 
formal representation of the danger to 
which these people would be exposed should 
Mayo appear before Tampico with his 
squadron, and asked that they be allowed to 
gather the refugees slowly and quietly and 
deliver them to the American ships. 



Mexico 27 

Impressed by the wisdom of the sugges- 
tion, xldmiral Mayo again sent the follow- 
ing message to Admiral Fletcher: 

Arranged as last resort to go in this morning 
to bring out Americans. Felt almost sure such 
action would precipitate hostilities. British 
captain whom I informed of my purpose re- 
quested me for the sake of all foreigners not to 
come in, but that he would send Americans out, 
to which I agreed. 

Hostilities were averted, likewise a pos- 
sible massacre, no property was destroyed, 
and not a single life was lost. Vera Cruz, 
occupied, worked the downfall of Huerta; 
the rise of a new order permitted evacua- 
tion and the resumption of the policy of 
non-interference. A plain, straight-run- 
ning record, rendered ugly and confused 
only by suppression and distortion. 

The Wilson policy with regard to the 
protection of American life and property 
in Mexico has been stated succinctly and re- 
peatedly. Property loss will be expressed 
in damages and collected in the course of 
recognized procedure, but the safety of 



28 Wilson and the Issues 

citizens cannot be guaranteed against the 
lawlessness of guerilla bands eager to em- 
barrass the established Government by acts 
of violence. Safe escort has been offered 
repeatedly, and those Americans who re- 
main in Mexico do so of their own will and 
despite warning. 

At the very moment when Republican 
clamor was greatest against President 
Wilson because of his refusal to send in an 
army for the protection of those who per- 
sisted in subjecting themselves to risk, the 
Republican party was recording itself in 
favor of the proposition that Americans 
had no rights on the high seas that Ger- 
many was bound to respect. Of the four- 
teen votes in the Senate in favor of the 
resolution warning Americans off of Eng- 
lish ships, twelve were cast by Republicans, 
while of the one hundred and forty-two 
votes in the House, one hundred and two 
were those of Republicans. 

The Villa raid across the border, like the 
Tampico incident, was another of those 
emergencies that defy fixed policies, yet 



Mexico 29 

even under its strain President Wilson re- 
mained steadfast, insisting that pursuit 
must not be regarded as other than a puni- 
tive expedition, carrying no purpose incon- 
sistent with the integrity and independence 
of Mexico. And yet again, as in every 
other crisis, he was compelled to labor 
against all the forces of hatred and treason. 
With the punitive expedition far into Mex- 
ico, every peon aflame with suspicion and 
distrust, and Carranza balancing between 
his pledged word to the United States and 
the anger of his own people, both Republi- 
can and Progressive conventions in Chicago 
wrote platforms that breathed war and 
conquest in every line. Giving edge to the 
furious alarm thus bred in the Mexican 
heart was the contempt for the United 
States that had been inspired by the 
unscrupulous and the venal, with their re- 
peated declarations that the American peo- 
ple were poltroons, that Wilson was a cow- 
ard, and that the United States could not 
whip any nation but Haiti. Is it any won- 
der thaft there was a Carrizal? 



30 Wilson and the Issues 

Always the sordid, vicious or reckless; 
never the sane, the democratic, and the pa- 
triotic. A principal source of President 
Wilson's difficulties is thus traced by 
Mr. J. W. Slaughter, writing in '*The 
Public": 

It was also possible during the period of wait- 
ing to test the quality of the newspaper represen- 
tatives whose work was to guide the public 
opinion of a great nation with reference to a 
weaker neighbor. One always expects that 
eagerness for news will lead to an irresponsible 
grasping of rumors, but one was hoping that 
there would be some ability to interpret events, to 
see under the waves to the ground swell and cur- 
rent, to grasp the significant even if they were 
compelled to report the trivial. Nearly all the 
writing done to shape American opinion within 
the period of my intimate acquaintance with 
Mexican affairs came from boys with no more 
political insight than is usually found on a col- 
lege campus, acting under definite orders as to 
what they should see and report. 

Mr. James Hopper, in an able article in 
*' Collier's,'' backs up Mr. Slaughter's ob- 
servation : 



Meaoico 81 

Of those who have no interests in Mexico, 
though, there is another kind — and I think they 
form the majority. They are those who not only 
own nothing in Mexico, but very little in the 
United States. These are in favor of a scrap — 
any kind of a scrap. They 'd like to see the 
United States invade Mexico just as they like to 
see a Johnson fight a Jeffries, or anybody fight 
anybody, or any dog any other dog: just to see 
the fight or read about it. To that category be- 
long most of the newspaper men who write from 
El Paso. And me, too, when I am feeling good. 

Out of the babel the voice of Woodrow 
Wilson is the one voice that has come clear 
and strong ; his declarations alone bear any 
relation to the governing principles of 
American life. To the professional paci- 
fists he has returned the answer that the 
United States cannot and will not tolerate 
hostile incursions without the most posi- 
tive and drastic reprisals, and that if the 
Carranza Government, either from weak- 
ness or unwillingness, is unable to prevent 
such incursions, the troops of the United 
States will be called upon to take up the 
task. 



32 Wilson and the Issues 

To the interventionists he has declared 
that the operations of United States troops 
in Mexico will be confined to a punitive and 
defensive character, and that even if war 
is brought about as a result of Carranza's 
inability or refusal to understand the sin- 
cere disinterestedness of America, the war 
will be waged without a single thought of 
conquest or acquisition of territory. 

Just as Mexico has been the test of 
Woodrow Wilson, so is it the test of the 
American people. From first to last the 
President has affirmed his belief in democ- 
racy not alone for the United States, but 
for all other nations harboring the aspira- 
tion. He stands on the conviction that a 
country has the right to live its independent 
life; he has not failed to remember that 
America came to self-government through 
years of blood and revolution ; as far as lies 
in his power he has stood firm against the 
*' strong-man'' theory by which the forces 
of reaction are trying to restore dictator- 
ship in Mexico. 

It is for the people of the United States 



Mexico 33 

to decide whether Woodrow Wilson is to 
be supported in his simple, unswerving 
support of the fundamental principles of 
democracy, or whether the faith of Wash- 
ington, of Jefferson, and of Lincoln is to 
be scrapped in favor of selfishness and 
greed. 



CHAPTER III 

BELGIUM AND THE LUSITANIA 

IT is not alone tlie democracy of the 
American people that is up for test, but 
the common honesty. Nothing is more 
natural than that the United States should 
be ''despised'' by combatants who seek our 
aid and are angered by our neutrality, but 
if a campaign of hysteria is permitted to 
destroy Woodrow Wilson, it is a surrender 
of self-respect that will prove all eon- 
tempt to have been deserved. 

The whole matter of Belgium, for in- 
stance, is illustrative of the attempt to have 
hypocrisy adopted as the governing prin- 
ciple of American life. Not at the time of 
the German invasion, or for months after- 
ward, was the question of a protest by the 
United States even suggested in Congress 
or in the press. Not only was there no 

34 



Belgium and the Lusitania 35 

treaty that bound America to take action, 
but it was not even claimed that such treaty 
existed. It was months before the full 
meaning of the German invasion, the full 
horror of it, burned into the consciousness 
of the American people. 

Speaking on February 16, 1916, Elihu 
Root, then a full-fledged Presidential can- 
didate, asserted that *^The American peo- 
ple were entitled not merely to feel, but 
to speak concerning the wrong done to 
Belgium. The law protecting Belgium 
which was violated was our law and the law 
of every other civilized nation.'' 

Better than any one else Elihu Root knew 
that the United States was bound by nei- 
ther law nor treaty. The Hague Declara- 
tion that the *^ territory of neutral powers 
is inviolable'' contained no means of en- 
forcement, and as far as the present war 
is concerned, nullified itself entirely by 
Article 20: *^The provisions of the present 
Convention do not apply except as between 
contracting parties, and then only if all the 
belligerents are parties to the Convention. ' ' 



36 Wilson and the Issues 

Neither Great Britain nor Servia ever rati- 
fied the convention. 

Mr. Eoosevelt was President at the time, 
and Mr. Root his secretary of state, and if 
the following clause was not inserted at 
their specific request, at least they gave it 
their indorsement: *' Nothing contained in 
this Convention shall be so construed as to 
require the United States of America to 
depart from its traditional policy of not 
intruding upon, interfering with, or en- 
tangling itself in the political questions of 
policy ... of any foreign state." 

A protest under this instrument was not 
even dreamed, much less urged. Mr. 
Lodge and Mr. Eoot and Mr. Roosevelt, 
now most shocked by President Wilson's 
*' poltroonery,'' were then without concep- 
tion of Belgium's value as a campaign 
issue. Not once in the year that followed 
the German occupation did a single Repub- 
lican leader in or out of Congress make de- 
mand upon the Government of the United 
States for official protest. Mr. Root was 
in the Senate for one year and six months 



Belgium and the Lusitania 37 

after the invasion of Belgium, but it was 
not until February 16, 1916, that he ever 
opened his mouth to voice indignation. 

As for Mr. Roosevelt, who devoted the 
latter part of 1915 and the first six months 
of 1916 to attacking President Wilson for 
his failure to protest in the matter of Bel- 
gium, the following article from his pen 
appeared in ''The Outlook" under date of 
September 23, 1914 : 

A deputation of Belgians has arrived in this 
country to invoke our assistance in the time of 
their dreadful need. What action our Govern- 
ment can or will take I know not. It has been 
announced that no action can be taken that will 
interfere with our entire neutrality. It is cer- 
tainly eminently desirable that we should re- 
main entirely neutral, and nothing but urgent 
need would warrant breaking x)ur neutrality and 
taking sides one way or the other. Our first duty 
is to hold ourselves ready to do whatever the 
changing circumstances demand in order to pro- 
tect our own interests in the present and in the 
future; although, for my own part, I desire to 
add to this statement the proviso that under no 
circumstances must we do anything dishonorable, 
especially towards unoffending weaker nations. 



38 Wilson and the Issues 

Neutrality may be of prime necessity in order to 
preserve our own interests, to maintain peace in 
so much of the world as is not affected by the 
war, and to conserve our influence for helping 
toward the reestablishment of general peace 
when the time comes ; for if any outside Power is 
able at such time to be the medium for bringing 
peace, it is more likely to be the United States 
than any other. But we pay the penalty of this 
action on behalf of peace for ourselves, and pos- 
sibly for others in the future, by forfeiting our 
right to do anything on behalf of peace for the 
Belgians in the present. We can maintain our 
neutrality only by refusal to do anything to aid 
unoffending weak Powers which are dragged into 
the gulf of bloodshed and misery through no 
fault of their own. Of course it would he folly 
to jump into the gulf ourselves to no good pur- 
pose; and very probably nothing that we could 
have done would have helped Belgium. We have 
not the smallest responsibility for what has be- 
fallen her, and I am sure that the sympathy of 
this country for the suffering of the men, tvomen, 
and children of Belgium is very real. Never- 
theless, this sympathy is compatible with full 
acknowledgment of the unwisdom of our uttering 
a single word of official protest unless we are pre- 
pared to make that protest effective; and only 
the clearest and most urgent National duty would 



Belgium and the Lusitania 39 

ever justify us in deviating from our rule of neu- 
trality and non-interference. But it is a grim 
comment on the professional pacificist theories as 
hitherto developed that our duty to preserve 
peace for ourselves may necessarily mean the 
abandonment of all effective effort to secure peace 
for other unoffending nations which through no 
fault of their own are dragged into the war. 

In the light of the developments of two 
years, it is easy to say what should or 
should not have been done, but the grim 
fact remains that throughout the year fol- 
lowing the Belgian invasion neither in Con- 
gress nor out was there the slightest de- 
mand for the official championship of the 
Belgian cause by the United States. 

The role of world policeman is a pleasing 
one to national conceit, and many a Presi- 
dent other than Mr. Wilson has been called 
upon to suffer for upholding the traditional 
policy of the United States with regard to 
entangling alliances. Washington himself 
was attacked furiously because he held to 
neutrality during the war between England 
and France, and Mr. Koosevelt did not es- 



40 Wilson and the Issues 

cape bitter censure when he refused to pro- 
test against the Kongo atrocities, the mur- 
der of Armenians, the Kishinef massacres, 
and against Japan's bold violation of 
America's treaty with Korea. 

The Lusitania clamor is no less the result 
of misunderstanding exaggerated by the 
Pharisaism of politicians. Mr. Hughes, 
taking quick cue from Mr. Roosevelt, made 
this declaration before his judicial robe had 
slipped from his shoulders to the floor : 

The most serious difficulties the present admin- 
istration has encountered have been due to its 
own weakness and incertitude. I am profoundly 
convinced that by prompt and decisive action, 
which existing conditions manifestly called for, 
the Lusitania tragedy would have been prevented. 

There is, to be sure, a certain uncon- 
scious human habit of substituting hind- 
sight for foresight, but not even the utmost 
stretch of charitable interpretation can 
save Mr. Hughes from the suspicion of pre- 
suming deliberately upon popular forget- 
fulness. The German warning appeared 
in the press on the very morning that the 



Belgium and the Lusitania 41 

Lusitania sailed. It came as one of those 
things that civilization has made incredible. 
Such people as noticed the warning laughed 
at it, and not even the passengers on the 
doomed boat attached the slightest im- 
portance to it. It was not possible for the 
twentieth century mind to adjust itself sud- 
denly to the mental processes of savagery, 
and had Mr. Hughes been President, the 
Tirpitz barbarism would have shocked him 
with its horrid surprise just as it shocked 
Mr. Wilson. 

Another idea more or less fixed in the 
average mind as the result of falsehood and 
malice is that President Wilson, while not 
necessarily declaring war on Germany, 
should at least have expressed the coun- 
try's indignation by breaking off diplo- 
matic relations. Yet had he adopted this 
course he would have played into the hands 
of Germany as completely as could have 
been desired by the most enthusiastic **hy- 
phen." 

What would have happened had Bern- 
storff been given his papers? For the 



42 Wilson and the Issues 

pleasure of a moment's bumptiousness, 
Belgium and Poland would have gone un- 
fed, and Turkish cruelty would have been 
given free hand in Armenia ; international 
law would have been left without a voice, 
and the rights of neutral nations, the obli- 
gations of humanity, lost to sight in an un- 
checked rage of *^ reprisals/^ All to what 
end? What would have been gained that 
has not been gained? 

Because diplomatic relations were not 
broken off, the United States has been per- 
mitted by Germany to feed the starving 
millions of Poland and Belgium, and the 
activities of Ambassador Morgenthau in 
behalf of butchery-threatened Armenians 
were not stayed. By virtue of steady, 
unyielding pressure, made possible only 
by diplomatic relations, Germany and 
England alike have been compelled to 
pay a continued regard to international 
law, and concession after concession has 
been secured by President Wilson that 
could not have been won by war. 

An even larger aspect of the matter is 



Belgium and the Lusitania 43 

presented by the following editorial, 
printed in *'Tlie New Kepublic" at the 
time: 

Whether or not President Wilson intends to 
break off diplomatic relations with Germany in 
case he fails to receive satisfaction for his de- 
mands we cannot yet know ; but the consequences 
of such a measure of retaliation should be recog- 
nized. Not only would it result in the continua- 
tion of an unregulated submarine campaign, ad- 
ditional loss of life by American citizens, and a 
probably irresistible subsequent demand for war, 
but it would prevent the United States from 
negotiating with more than one of the major 
belligerents. The ability to negotiate with all of 
them may in the future be a matter of the ut- 
most importance. This war will never be 
stopped unless at some particular juncture a 
certain number of men representing the several 
fighting nations can be brought together to dis- 
cuss possible terms of peace. The United States 
is likely to be the most available agency for ar- 
ranging such a conference. It may be the only 
Power which will be free to open informal nego- 
tiations for a conference. But if it breaks off 
diplomatic relations with Germany it will be un- 
able to make any move, no matter how tentative 
and informal, in the direction of peace ; it will be 



44 Wilson and the Issues 

involved by the war even if it is not involved in 
the war; and its subsequent freedom of move- 
ment and international usefulness will be very 
much restricted. 

As for ^^ protests in the name of human- 
ity,'' a phrase increasingly dear to the un- 
thinking as well as the subtle, what higher 
ground could have been taken than the 
Wilson notes with regard to the Lusi- 
tania and the Anconaf The annals of in- 
ternational correspondence contain no such 
scathing arraignment of one world power 
by another, and every word was more effec- 
tive than a gunshot in expressing Amer- 
ica's horror and detestation. To all such 
sympathizers, there is but a single an-, 
swer. If diplomacy, with its victories, 
is to be given over in favor of the harsh 
uncertainties of war, it is not one na- 
tion that must be fought, but all. Eng- 
land has violated rule after rule in the mat- 
ter of contraband, Germany has heaped of- 
fense upon otfense, the Allies marched 
across Greece even as Germany marched 
across Belgium, though with no such 



Belgium and the Lusitania 45 

ghastly result, and Japan has disregarded 
justice in her treatment of China. Inter- 
national law has broken down at every 
point, and the world's one hope of salvage 
lies in the persistence of American stand- 
ards. 



CHAPTER IV 



*^ NATIONAL. HONOR ^' 



THE amazing thing is not that history 
repeats itself, but that people learn 
so little from these repetitions. Judging 
from current comment, it might be imag- 
ined that neutrality, as a national policy, 
was the naive and original conception of 
Woodrow Wilson, when, as a matter of rec- 
ord, the doctrine was first declared by 
Washington himself, and reiterated time 
and again by the Presidents that followed 
him. And just as Woodrow Wilson is 
abused for upholding this fixed principle of 
national conduct, so was abuse of incredible 
malignity heaped upon the Father of the 
Country, JefiPerson, Adams, Pierce, Van 
Buren, Lincoln, Grant, and Harrison. 

Given certain changes in names, the chron- 
icle of 1793 might well serve as t)ie chron- 

46 



''National Honor'' 47 

icle of 1916. Over in Europe the French, 
having sent Louis and Marie Antoinette to 
death, were measuring their arms against 
the combined forces of Great Britain, 
Spain, Holland, Austria, and Prussia. 
Back from Paris came Thomas Jefferson, 
afire with sympathy, eager for the United 
States to plunge into the pit of blood. Also 
came Citizen Genet, accredited as minister 
to this country by the French republic, a 
zealous person, determined to force us into 
w^ar on the side of France whether we would 
or no, fomenting conspiracies, scattering 
commissions for privateers, even before 
the presentation of his credentials. 

The nation divided even as to-day. 
There was a *^ British party'' and a 
*' French party''; the rising flood of hate 
tore at the frail foundations of the new 
Government, and then, in the day of ex- 
treme tension, President Washington issued 
a proclamation of neutrality. How they at- 
tacked him for it ! French party and Brit- 
ish party, equally angered, searched their 
souls for new epithets, and the political 



48 Wilson and the Issues 

leaders of the day led mobs against the 
White House, and talked of pulling Wash- 
ington from the Presidential chair. 

To strengthen this policy, and to safe- 
guard the United States against the con- 
tinual threat of war, Washington then en- 
tered into various negotiations for the 
amicable settlement of existing disputes. 
Outstanding differences with England were 
settled by the Jay Treaty in 1794, and a 
treaty with Spain secured to the United 
States the free navigation of the Missis- 
sippi River, and the use of the port of 
New Orleans for ten years. 

The name of Washington was hooted in 
every city, Jay was burned in effigy, Ham- 
ilton stoned in the City of New York, 
Virginia cried for disunion. Democrats 
adorned their hats with the French cockade, 
and the Roosevelts of that day clamored 
for a guillotine. And yet in less than four 
years the whole tide of feeling changed, 
and as a result of French insults, French 
depredations and oppression, the people 
clamored for President Adams to declare 



"National Honor" 49 

war against France. But though Adams 
called Washington from retirement to be 
commander-in-chief, and built twelve war- 
ships for aggressive action, he still con- 
tinued to have reliance in ** note-writing, '^ 
and in 1800, after two years of trying ne- 
gotiation, an amicable settlement was 
reached that acknowledged and guarantied 
every right for which the United States had 
been contesting. 

Times without number these hard-won 
rights of neutrality have been violated. In 
every instance the American people, taking 
fire furiously, have cried for war as the 
one means of vindicating the *^ national 
honor''; in every instance a President of 
the United States has had the courage to 
hold to the orderly diplomatic procedure 
of Washington and Adams, eventually win- 
ning justice without resort to war. 

In 1807, during the administration of Jef- 
ferson, the deadly grapple between France 
and England swept American commerce 
from the seas. British ** orders'' and 
French *^ decrees" placed the vessels of the 



50 Wilson and the Issues 

United States at the mercy of the warring 
powers, and great loss and unbearable hu- 
miliation resulted. The Chesapeake affair 
came as a climax. 

Four of the crew of the Melampus, a 
British ship lying off Annapolis, deserted 
and enlisted for service on the Chesapeake, 
then fitting out in the Washington Navy- 
yard. The British Government made for- 
mal demand for their surrender, but Jef- 
ferson refused, upon learning that three of 
the deserters were American seamen who 
were merely escaping from impressment. 

On June 22, as the Chesapeake left 
Hampton Eoads, H. M. S. Leopard fell in 
behind, and, once out at sea, hailed the 
Chesapeake and sent a lieutenant aboard 
with an order for the arrest of the four 
deserters. As a consequence of Commo- 
dore Barron's refusal, the Leopard raked 
the Chesapeake with solid shot, killing 
three and wounding eighteen, and then, 
when the American flag came down, 
boarded a second time, and took off the 
four deserters. 



"National Honor'^ 51 

The crisis aif orded a chance for the peo- 
ple to judge between the irresponsibility of 
the private person and the responsibility of 
the official. Jefferson as a citizen had been 
a leader in the denunciation of Washington 
for his refusal to plunge into the European 
war on the side of France, but Jefferson as 
President calmed immeasurably under the 
realization that the fate of a nation, the 
lives of thousands, hung upon his decisions. 
Appreciating the ^^ maniac state of Eu- 
rope," he made the w^hole matter the sub- 
ject of diplomatic exchanges, and even- 
tually won complete disavowal of the act 
from England, restoration of the men, and 
full indemnity. 

Martin Van Buren was the next Presi- 
dent to reaffirm Washington's policy of 
neutrality, and to stand firm against the 
passions of the people. In 1837, Canada 
surged in revolt against the rule of Eng- 
land, and American sympathy rose to a 
pitch where whole companies were organ- 
ized in the United States and sent across 
the border to aid the insurgents. Among 



52 Wilson and the Issues 

other decisive acts, an American force took 
possession of Navy Island, two miles above 
Niagara Falls, fortifying it with seven hun- 
dred men, twenty cannon, and the steam- 
boat Caroline. A party of Royalists, cross- 
ing from the Canadian shore one midnight, 
set fire to the Caroline, cut her adrift, and 
sent her over the falls. 

President Van Buren issued a proclama- 
tion of neutrality, sent General Winfield 
Scott to the border to enforce the order, 
and entered into successful negotiations 
with Great Britain for the settlement of all 
differences. 

Every one of the four years of the Presi- 
dency of Franklin Pierce was marked by 
crises that would have led to war but for 
the fact that Washington's doctrine of neu- 
trality had become a fundamental princi- 
ple of American life. The Spanish author- 
ities in Cuba seized the American steamer 
BlacJc Warrior and confiscated her cargo; 
the filibustering exploits of "Walker in 
Mexico and Central America brought the 
United States into critical relations with 



f'\7 



National Hono7^" 53 

the Central American states, and the bold 
action of the British in enlisting recruits in 
this country for the Crimean campaign 
forced President Pierce to dismiss the Brit- 
ish minister and the British consuls at New 
York, Philadelphia, and Cincinnati. All 
these difficulties were settled by peaceful 
negotiation. 

Lincoln, added to his other difficulties, 
was forced to contend with the enmity of 
Great Britain and France, both nations 
seeming equally anxious for the overthrow 
of the Union, moved alike by certain na- 
tional envies and the greed stirred by the 
Confederacy's offer of free trade in cotton. 
England hurriedly accorded belligerents' 
rights to the Confederacy, and France 
turned private and national shipbuilding 
yards over to the uses of the South. From 
France and England came the Confederate 
raiders that destroyed 193 American ships. 

The *' Trent Affair," by reason of its 
wide illustrative sweep, may be recalled 
with immense profit by the jingoes of to- 
day. Mason and Slidell, Confederate com- 



54 Wilson and the Issues 

missioners to France, passengers on board 
the British mail-steamer Trent, were for- 
cibly seized by Captain Wilkes of the 
American warship San Jacinto, conveyed 
to Boston, and lodged in Fort Warren as 
prisoners of state. Although the action 
was supported enthusiastically by the peo- 
ple of the North, it was a flagrant viola- 
tion of England's neutral rights, and the 
great body of English clamored for war. 
Instead of that. Great Britain took up the 
matter through diplomatic channels. Presi- 
dent Lincoln disavowed the act of Captain 
Wilkes, Mason and Slidell were released, 
and the rights of neutrality were once more 
defined and declared. 

Steadfastly holding to the efiScacy of 
''notes'* as opposed to Seward's continual 
insistence upon war, President Lincoln 
forced ample reparation from England for 
her various outrages, and in the end won 
Lord Kussell's famous order that no more 
vessels should be fitted out in Great Britain 
or tolerated in British waters for preying 
on the commerce of the United States by 



''National Honor" 55 

persons in the employ of the ^^ so-called 
Confederate States.'' 

In 1873 the Virginius, flying the Ameri- 
can flag, was captured off Jamaica by the 
Spanish warship Tornado. Taken into the 
port of Santiago, four of the ship's pas- 
sengers were hanged as pirates, and Cap- 
tain Fry and thirty-six other Americans 
were lined up against a wall and shot. 
President Grant instructed Secretary of 
State Fish to take up the matter with Spain 
at once, but so great was the popular de- 
mand for war that the names of the Presi- 
dent and the secretary were hissed at pub- 
lic meetings. 

The demands of the United States were 
the restoration of the Virginius, release and 
delivery to the United States of the pris- 
oners still living, the salute of the United 
States flag, and the signal punishment of 
the officials concerned in the capture. As a 
result of Grant's phrase-making and note- 
writing, Spain agreed to meet these de- 
mands if the facts in the case were as rep- 
resented, and a protocol was signed. In- 



56 Wilson and the Issues 

vestigation disclosed that the Virginius was 
owned by a syndicate of Cuban revolution- 
ists, and that while her papers were osten- 
sibly those of a peaceful trader, she was 
in reality a filibuster. The United States, 
therefore, withdrew its demand for a salute 
to the flag, Spain paid an indemnity of 
eighty thousand dollars to the heirs, and 
the incident was closed. 

It is not alone the present peace and 
honor of the United States that lie staked 
on the coming election, but the peace and 
honor of the nation during all the years 
that are to come. A repudiation of Wood- 
row "Wilson involves the repudiation of the 
policy of neutrality, and a return to the evil 
days when armed force was the one method 
of adjusting disputes, when every war was 
a world w^ar, when blood lust ruled, and 
wiien human lives were pawns in the greedy 
game of territorial acquisition. It is civili- 
zation itself that Woodrow Wilson has been 
fighting for, and as the people of America 
vote, so will their stage of civilizational de- 
velopment be measured. 



CHAPTER V 

MANUFACTUEING HYSTERIA 

LOOKING back, ^^preparedness'' is 
seen to have been less of an agitation 
and more of an explosion. One day the 
country went about its business, aware of 
needs and failures, but held to strength and 
confidence by decent resolves ; the next saw 
it plunged into an abyss of self-slander. 
A rain of terror and abuse beat upon the 
land and its people. 

Books, magazines, and newspapers 
blazed with thrilling fiction that described 
the descent of foreign foes upon the United 
States, the terrific bombardments that 
made a mock of our laughable defense, the 
capture and the sack of great cities, the 
wild flight of our armies, and the destruc- 
tion of our navies, the Screams of women 
borne away into shameful captivity, the 
last moans of slaughtered innocents. 

57 



58 Wilson and the Issues 

With tlie utmost circumstantiality it was 
pointed out that there was not one single 
solitary reason why an alien force of four 
hundred thousand armed men could not be 
landed on the shores of America almost 
overnight, that not a single city on the 
Atlantic seaboard was guarded against 
pillage, and that as rolls the tidal-wave, 
so would the invading host sweep from 
east to west, leaving waste and death be- 
hind. 

No tradition dear to the heart of Amer- 
ica was spared; no monument went with- 
out its mud. With the painstaking care 
that is presumed to be saved for labors of 
love, Eevolutionary records were searched 
to show that the soldiers of Washington 
were for the most part a cowardly lot, and 
that victory was the result of chance 
rather than courage. Gloatingly, fondly, 
the desertions of the Civil War were re- 
counted, and the slime of detraction spread 
over every battle from Manassas to Ap- 
pomattox. 

*'War correspondents," with a round- 



Manufacturing Hysteria 59 

trip ticket in one hand and a lunch-basket 
in the other, visited Europe, and returned 
to alarm us with their ponderous judg- 
ments. Rich expatriates, driven to Amer- 
ica by the cessation of social life in Lon- 
don and the Continental centers, waxed 
fervid in denunciation of America's pol- 
troonery, and described at length the con- 
tempt in which we were held abroad. 

Novelists and short-story writers, quick 
to realize that their sex stulT was no longer 
in demand, turned quickly to " patriotism, '* 
and thundered denunciations of America's 
sordidness, with now and then a touch of 
the elaborately sarcastic by comparing the 
United States to Liberia. The deeps of 
obscurity gave up (pieer figures to take 
cocksure places at the heads of the various 
leagues and associations and committees 
that bubbled into being in every city and 
every State. 

All sense of humor, of fitness, of propor- 
tion, of decency even, seemed to vanish. 
Men responsible for the embalmed beef and 
paper-soled shoes of the Spanish- American 



60 Wilson and the Issues 

War denounced and exhorted; nonde- 
scripts became arbiters, and as a last 
crowning contribution to the general mad- 
ness, a group of wealthy women began to 
gather a list of the summer homes that 
could be used to care for wounded soldiers 
in event of war ! 

It must be admitted that no intelligent 
efPort was made to stem the tide of agita- 
tion. The fact did stand clear that the 
world had not yet progressed to a point 
where war may be dismissed from human 
calculation; the fact did stand clear that 
the United States was grossly unprepared 
in many vital particulars. Instead of ad- 
mitting these facts, and demanding that 
they be dealt with sanely and intelligently, 
the opposition ignored them. Had the 
forces of democracy taken *^real prepared- 
ness'* as a battle-cry, pointing to Eussia 
and England as examples of the foll}^ that 
puts all emphasis on ships and guns rather 
than upon the health, strength, and patri- 
otism of the people, there might have been 
eifective resistance. By adopting *'anti- 



Manufacturing Hysteria 61 

preparedness^' as a slogan, however, not 
only did they affront the convictions of the 
mass, but dissipated their own energies in 
stupidly negative effort. 

As a consequence, the agencies of hys- 
teria were given a clear field for their ac- 
tivities, and that which should have been 
no more than a matter of orderly, non- 
partizan procedure is now a bitter, muddled 
issue to be settled at the polls in November. 
Perhaps, after all, it is just as well, for 
while preparedness itself is a detail, the 
whole question has come to be involved 
with tremendous decisions that have vital 
bearing on the future of democracy. 

A first task of understanding is to grasp 
the utter falsity of much that has been said 
and written. Even while the *^ ready-to- 
serve'' writers were turning out their 
lurid tales of invasion and conquest. Gen- 
eral Erasmus Weaver, head of the coast 
artillery, was testifying before a congres- 
sional committee to this effect; that no 
fortifications in the whole world compared 
favorably with the coast defenses of the 



62 Wilson and the Issut^s 

United States; that witli an additional 
eleven thousand men complete adequacy 
would be secured; that the hysterical as- 
sumption that our seaboard was open to 
easy conquest was mere farrago. 

At the same time, also, the Allies were 
abandoning the Gallipoli attack, beating 
a retreat that in itself was a confession of 
ghastly failure. The Turks had no such 
fortifications as ours, no such guns, nor 
were they possessed of any naval aid what- 
soever, yet after a year of incessant effort, 
during which the Allies concentrated navies 
and armies, the landing force never got 
beyond the range of the guns of the ships. 
It is also well to remember that it required 
thirty-three days for England to move 
thirty-three thousand unequipped troops 
between Quebec and Southampton, al- 
though the journey was between friendly 
ports. 

A second task is to dismiss Mr. Roose- 
velt as the source of the preparedness hys- 
teria or even as an executive agent in its 
promotion. Nothing is more safe than to 



Manufacturing Hysteria 63 

set hiim down as the megaphone that gave 
carrying power to the thoughts, purposes, 
and directions of the giant forces that chose 
to remain unseen. It may he that he was 
an unconscious tool, simply seeing the rise 
of the movement, and springing forward 
in instant appreciation that passion and 
prejudice were the only possible weapons 
to be used against President Wilson. Or, 
again, it may be that he was a willing pawn 
in the game of hate, a sinister interpreta- 
tion that gains strength by virtue of his 
abject surrender in the hour of personal 
defeat. 

In either case, his role was subordinate. 
The intelligence that conceived the prepar- 
edness madness, the power that gave it 
force and effect, proceeded in no degree 
from any one man or men, but took shape 
as the definite policy of that mysterious, 
titanic thing that is variously referred to 
as high finance, big business, special priv- 
ilege, or Wall Street. This policy may be 
expressed in the one word — imperialism. 

The situation, as well as its successive 



64 Wilson and the Issues 

creative events, come very clear under 
scrutiny. First we have the growth of 
combinations, syndicates, and monopolies, 
bringing with them an undreamed concen- 
tration of wealth and power. As an in- 
evitable result of monopolization, with its 
lordly control of prices, surplus capital 
began to accumulate, piling up in the great 
financial centers, and constituting in itself 
an imperative problem. Two causes op- 
erated powerfully against its employment 
in domestic development. 

First, a very definite change in American 
conditions. In the dawn of the industrial 
order a warm geniality enveloped all busi- 
ness without respect to size or purpose, and 
*^ empire builders'' and *^ captains of in- 
dustry'' were phrases that lingered pleas- 
antly in the popular mouth. As time went 
by, however, scandals bubbled, and out of 
public knowledge of the corrupt control of 
courts, legislative bodies, and executive 
officials the people learned to distinguish 
between development and exploitation, be- 
tween legitimate business and loaded-dice 



Manufacturing Hysteria 65 

business. This new intelligence resulted 
in the Inter-state Commerce Commission, 
the growth of municipal ownership, the 
fight for conservation of the natural re- 
sources, the direct election of United States 
senators, anti-trust laws, the Federal Trade 
Commission, and rural credits legislation, 
all working in some degree to make do- 
mestic investment less than attractive for 
those accustomed to tremendous returns. 

Second, to use surplus capital along 
purely industrial lines would impair the 
very monopolization that they had been at 
such pains to create. New railroads, new 
enterprises, if launched, would not only put 
them in the position of competing with 
themselves, but might also lessen their iron 
control over supply and demand. 

Naturally, inevitably, the money masters 
began to turn their eyes away from the 
United States, fixing them upon such for- 
eign countries as had not yet been taught 
the bitter difference between development 
and exploitation, between enterprise and 
rapacity. Weak peoples, as a matter of 



66 Wilson and the Issues 

course, either at the mercy of venal dicta- 
tors, with whom profitable bargains might 
be made in the matter of contracts and con- 
cessions or else overrun by greedy merce- 
naries willing to put themselves at the dis- 
posal of generous employers. 

Surplus capital began to flow into Mex- 
ico and Central America, just as the sur- 
plus capital of England had flowed into 
South Africa, Egypt and India ; just as the 
surplus capital of France went into Mo- 
rocco ; just as the surplus capital of Russia 
and England went into Persia ; just as the 
surplus capital of Germany went into Tur- 
key; just as the surplus capital of Japan 
went into China. 

As a fly in the ointment, however, was 
the traditional refusal of the United States 
to let its armies and navies be used by high 
finance as debt-collecting agencies. No 
such drawback menaced the foreign gam- 
bles of Europe's surplus capital. As far 
back as the foreign secretaryship of Lord 
Palmerston, England had yielded to the 
demands of money, and announced its 



Manufacturing Hysteria 67 

*^ rights of protection'' policy that placed 
the military power of the empire behind 
every concessionaire. All the stronger na- 
tions of Europe followed England's exam- 
ple, virtually agreeing to bully weak peo- 
ples in behalf of surplus capital. 

During the administration of President 
Taft, American high finance made a deter- 
mined effort to gain the same powerful 
backing that had permitted Europe's high 
finance to plunder Morocco, Algeria, Tunis, 
India, Africa, and Persia. Loans were to 
be made to Central American governments 
under treaty agreement that the United 
States should have the right to intervene 
in case of revolution. Had the deal gone 
through, what would have been more sim- 
ple than to manufacture a revolution, bring 
about intervention, and then, with Ameri- 
can arms on hand to give the necessary 
peace and order, proceed w^ith the highly 
profitable w^ork of exploitation? 

Even though defeated in the scheme, de- 
spite the ardent assistance of Mr. Taft 
and Secretary Knox, high finance did not 



68 Wilson and the Issues 

despair, but turned to China. In 1912 this 
unhappy country was compelled to become 
an urgent borrower. A syndicate of Eng- 
lish, French, and German banks had been 
enjoying a monopoly of Chinese looting, 
but Japan and Kussia had begun to clamor 
for a share, and American interests had 
grown sufficiently powerful to demand con- 
sideration. As a consequence, the *^ six- 
power'' group was formed, and China told 
that in order to get the $30,000,000 that she 
needed, the sum of $300,000,000 must be 
borrowed. In addition to this, there were 
the further stipulations that the expendi- 
ture of the loan, as well as the administra- 
tion of the salt monopoly, should be placed 
under the control of men designated by the 
lenders. The English, German, Kussian, 
French, and Japanese financiers proceeded 
in the full knowledge that their various 
countries were willing to protect their ex- 
tortions to the point of intervention and 
conquest, and the Morgan interests, repre- 
senting the American syndicate, felt as- 
sured that President Taft and Secretary 



Manufacturing Hysteria 69 

Knox could be trusted to an equal ex- 
tent. 

Before the contracts could be completed, 
however, President Taft and Secretary 
Knox sank from sight, and President Wil- 
son, in his very first month of office, repu- 
diated an arrangement that struck at the 
''administrative integrity of China,'' and 
put the army and navy of the United States 
at the disposal of a Wall Street group. 
Sadly enough, the American syndicate 
withdrew, and sadly enough the remaining 
fiVQ powers, frightened by the search-light 
thus turned on them, reduced its terms 
to a $125,000 loan, and gave over their de- 
mands for full control of the salt monopoly. 

It is high finance, with its surplus capi- 
tal and its avid greed for the rich returns 
that are to be found in weak, undeveloped 
countries, that is behind the preparedness 
agitation, that is behind the desperate at- 
tempt to destroy Woodrow Wilson. It is 
not a preparedness for defense that these 
forces desire, but a preparedness for ag- 
gression. 



70 Wilson and the Issues 

Their propaganda, carried on through 
the magazines and the newspapers that 
they owned, the Eepublican party that they 
control, and the politicians and writers 
that they have been able to prostitute, has 
a twofold purpose ; first, the promotion of 
a great military and naval establishment 
that will permit them to bully with the best ; 
second, the elimination of a President who 
has stood in their way, and who will con- 
tinue to stand in their way if reelected. 

The issue, in its very essence, is empire 
versus democracy. The question that the 
people of the United States are called upon 
to answer is this : Are we to continue as 
a democratic people, holding to our ancient 
faith in liberty and justice as great gov- 
erning principles, or are we to turn Amer- 
ica over to a group of financiers, denation- 
alized by greed, drunk with a dream of 
imperialism, and blind to every domestic 
need? 

It is a decision between the decent, or- 
derly development of our own resources, 
to the end that wretchedness, injustice, and 



Manufacturing Hysteria 71 

ignorance shall be eliminated from the na- 
tional life, and a return to the feudal mad- 
ness that places a people at the disposal of 
lords and overlords, to be used as the dumb 
instruments of rapacity; a choice between 
the ideals of peace and the sordid shame 
of continual money wars. 



CHAPTEK VI 

THE NATIONAL. DEFENSE 

THE confusion and indirection that 
have attended the discussion of a de- 
fense program are an indictment of our 
governmental system rather than an in- 
dictment of men or even of parties. There 
is no opportunity whatever for the expres- 
sion of public opinion on great issues as 
they arise, and the quadrennial election is 
scarce more than the field-day of partizan 
prejudice. 

With regard to the form and extent of 
preparedness, the President received no 
command, and Congress, equally unad- 
vised, stumbled and stuttered in a pitiable 
state of uncertainty. Mr. Mann, speaking 
for the Eepublican minority, was certain 
that action must be taken, but when pressed 

72 



The National Defense 73 

for details, flatly disavowed support of a 
large standing army or compulsory serv- 
ice. The President's solemn speech at 
Topeka was followed within twenty-four 
hours by a vote of the State Grange of 
Kansas that put a million farmers on 
record against a single dollar of increase 
in the present army and navy appropria- 
tions. 

Eegardless of where Mr. Wilson stood 
in 1914, when the sentiment of the country 
was unanimous against action that might 
have been regarded as inflammatory and 
aggressive, the fact remains that his later 
advocacy of preparedness was as clear and 
bold as words could make it. Nor did he 
fail to indicate the course that he believed 
should be taken. 

In all of his speeches he declared his 
friendliness to a plan that would give the 
United States a citizen soldiery along 
Swiss or Australian lines, and with equal 
force he placed himself on record against 
any attempt to base home defense upon the 
organized militia. He said: 



74 Wilson and the Issues 

There are a hundred million people in this 
country, but there are only 129,000 men in the 
National Guard, and those 129,000 men are under 
the direction, by the constitutional arrangements 
of our system, of the governors of more than two- 
score States. The President of the United States 
is not at liberty to call them out of their States ex- 
cept upon the occasion of actual invasion of the 
territory of the United States. ... I want Con- 
gress to do a great deal for the National Guard, 
but I do not see how Congress can put the Na- 
tional Guard at the disposal of the nation. 

What else could have been done by him 
save the arbitrary adoption of some one 
plan, drawing up his own bill, and attempt- 
ing to force it upon a Congress torn to 
pieces by a thousand indecisions? Out of 
the babel what clear word is there for his 
guidance 1 

The militarists, with their dream of em- 
pire, preach a preparedness that would 
turn the United States into an armed camp, 
and a program of naval increase that would 
burden the country with a terrible, crush- 
ing load of taxation. The pacifists go to 
an extreme that takes no account of present 



The National Defense 75 

dangers or future needs, and stand as iron 
against augmentation of either army or 
navy. A middle ground must be found, 
as a matter of course, but who can tell just 
when the ground is middle 1 

With regard to the nav}^, no principle is 
involved, the whole question centering 
about size and efficiency. Land defense, 
however, is not only debatable, but will 
continue to be debatable for a long time to 
come, and the debate rages as fiercely 
wherever citizens gather as it does in Con- 
gress. An issue so vitally concerned with 
the life and future of democracy is not 
determinable in a day or by the violences 
of extremists. 

The intelligent thought of the country is 
fixed upon some sound system of general 
training after the Swiss and Australian 
models, but it is equally certain that the 
great mass of people, out of a blind fear of 
militarism, are not yet ready for the step. 
Senator Chamberlain's bill, prepared with 
the approval of the President, and pro- 
viding for the general training of Ameri- 



76 Wilson and the Issues 

can youth, died without a Democratic or 
Eepublican voice to speak for it. 

With regard to the Hay bill, with its pro- 
posed federalization of the National Guard, 
nothing is more unfair than the hasty gen- 
eralization that writes it down as a '^pork 
measure." While political considerations 
played an undoubted part in its passage, 
back of the bill was the driving force of 
one hundred and thirty-eight years of tra- 
dition. The organized militia, with all its 
glaring faults, is still an American insti- 
tution, bed-rocked in habit and prejudice. 

In 1903, with Mr. Roosevelt in the White 
House, and the Republican party in abso- 
lute control of Congress, the question of 
home defense arose, and the answer made 
was the Dick bill, which provided federal 
aid for the upbuilding of the National 
Guard. Since that time the Government 
has spent over $75,000,000 under the Dick 
Law, and much of the support received by 
the Hay bill was due to a feeling that the 
investment was worth protecting. 

Whatever one may think of the fitness 



The National Defense 77 

or unfitness of the National Guard, the 
fact stands clear that its membership re- 
sponded instantly and generously, quitting 
civil pursuits for the hardships of the bor- 
der without a murmur. 

There has been no opportunity yet to 
test the merits of the Hay Law. It may 
work well or badly, but since the bill has 
passed, and since tens of thousands are 
serving their country in arms, justice de- 
mands that it be given a fair chance to 
show what it will do. 

Supplementing the Hay bill is an exten- 
sion of the ^'Plattsburg idea,'' first intro- 
duced successfully in 1915. The sum of 
$2,000,000 has been provided to maintain 
these camps without expense to those who 
attend, a wise improvement that will put 
this training within reach of all. 

The enlargement of the army to 175,000, 
exclusive of the Philippine scouts, quarter- 
master corps, and signal corps, will suit 
neither the militarists nor the pacifists, 
but the figure may be set down as an hon- 
est attempt to strike the medium. 



78 Wilson and the Issues 

To meet the demand for officers, the act 
of May 4, 1916, doubles the size of West 
Point, permitting an attendance of 1160 
instead of the present 580. In addition to 
this, provision is made for the promotion 
of men from the ranks of the regular army 
and the national guard. 

As in the case of submarines, the Wil- 
son administration found an army with- 
out air-craft, and an aviation service given 
over to mess and muddle. To-day the 
army possesses three complete squadrons, 
each consisting of twelve biplanes with 
160 horse-power motors, and the necessary 
auxiliary equipment of motor-trucks and 
traveling machine shops. Orders have 
also been placed for additional machines, 
the sum of $3,200,000 having been provided 
for the purpose. Civilian experts, se- 
lected by the naval consulting board, have 
been placed in the factories to aid in the 
work, to hurry it, and to see that specifica- 
tions are followed. Aviation schools are 
being conducted for officers and enlisted 



The National Defense 79 

men, and arrangement has also been made 
for the commissioning of expert aviators 
from civil life. 

To those who look upon air-craft as a 
simple, economical means of defense, the 
cost figures will come as something of a 
shock. The expense of buying, equipping, 
and maintaining a complete squadron of 
twelve biplanes mounts up to $800,000 a 
year, after which a fixed annual expense 
of $600,000 may be counted upon. In Eu- 
rope, for instance, no plane lasts longer 
than three months, wearing out completely 
in that time, if not destroyed by shot or 
accident. For the benefit of such as place 
large value upon the opinion of ^^ experts," 
it may be mentioned that Commodore E. 
E. Peary talks carelessly of maintaining 
500 biplanes on each coast as a proper 
peace measure, although the annual cost 
of this one defense feature would be 
$50,000,000. 

By far and away the most effective fea- 
ture of the Wilson preparedness program. 



80 Wilson and the Issues 

however, is the great work that has for its 
object the mobilization of the industrial 
resources of the United States. Two 
truths have been made to stand clear by 
the European war; one that battles are 
lost by things, not men; the other that a 
fighting force is no stronger than the fac- 
tories behind it. In the naval consulting 
board, formed by Secretary Daniels, Presi- 
dent Wilson saw the big idea of industrial 
preparedness, and straightway wrote the 
request that brought 30,000 engineers into 
the work. 

Already an inventory is being made of 
the factories of the nation not only with 
respect to machinery, but also with respect 
to men. When this data is digested, the 
Government will be possessed of full and 
absolutely accurate information as to the 
manufacture of munitions in case of war. 
Under Lloyd-George's efficient handling, 
England found that there was not a 
manufacturing concern of any kind that 
could not be changed into a munition 
plant, and the nature of the necessary 



The National Defense 81 

changes is what the engineering experts 
of the United States mean to discover at 
once. 

Peace practice of munition manufacture, 
for instance, will be begun shortly. Small 
annual orders will be given to the various 
manufacturers, and government techni- 
cians, going into the factories, will point 
out the adaptations of machinery, instruct 
the various departments, and acquaint the 
business with every detail of the work. 
As a result, not only will a store of reserve 
supplies be accumulated, but every factory 
in the nation will be ready to play its part 
at a moment's notice should war ever be 
declared. 

A feature of the plan is the formation 
of an industrial reserve, made up of the 
skilled workers of the country, that will 
have the same standing in war times as 
the fighting force, although remaining in 
the factory instead of taking to the field. 
England and France, foolishly enlisting 
every available man, found their muni- 
tion manufacture demoralized as a conse- 



82 Wilson and the Issues 

quence, and were forced to recall skilled 
labor from the trenches. The industrial 
reserve of the United States is designed to 
prevent such a muddle. 

To supplement the activities of these 
30,000 technicians, the sum of $2,000,000 
has been appropriated for a laboratory for 
purposes of research, invention, and ex- 
perimentation. Also $20,000,000 has been 
provided for the construction of a nitrate 
plant. 

The larger importance of these features 
of the President's policy lies in the fact 
that industrial preparedness is primarily 
a preparedness for peace. Out of the in- 
ventory of American factories and the en- 
listment of the patriotism of employer and 
worker alike, is bound to come increased 
efficiency, understanding, and solidarity, 
while the laboratory is as much an indus- 
trial need as a military necessity. 

Coming to the record of the Wilson ad- 
ministration with regard to naval pre- 
paredness, common justice points out the 
fact that navies are not built in a day or a 



The National Defense 83 

year, and inadequacies must be traced much 
further back than 1912, if blame is to be 
allotted justly. It was in 1903 that the 
general board, with Admiral Dewey at its 
head, outlined a continuous building pro- 
gram that had as its object the mainte- 
nance of the United States as the second 
naval power in the world. Not only were 
these recommendations disregarded en- 
tirely, but they were hidden from Congress 
and the public, and not until Secretary 
Daniels decided upon full publicity was 
their nature known. 

During the four years of the Eoosevelt 
administration that followed the creation 
of the general board, this expert body 
recommended thirteen capital ships, ex- 
actly the same number authorized by Ger- 
many. Mr. Eoosevelt built six only, openly 
taking issue with the general board, and 
adopting a ^* small nav^^'' policy. In his 
1905 message, he said, ^^It does not seem 
to me necessary, however, that the navy 
should — at least in the immediate future — 
be increased beyond the present number 



84 Wilson and the Issues 

of units." Again in his 1906 message 
he declared: ^*I do not ask that we con- 
tinue to increase our navy. I ask merely 
that it be maintained at its present 
strength. ' ' 

As a direct consequence of this attitude, 
Germany passed the United States as a 
naval power in 1909. In that year the gen- 
eral board recommended four battle-ships ; 
but Secretary Meyer, after admitting in 
his report, '^Germany is now second among 
the principal naval powers in warship ton- 
nage built and building, '^ recommended 
two warships only, and only two were built. 
In 1910 the general board recommended 
four battle-ships, and two were authorized; 
in 1911, four again, and only one was au- 
thorized ; in 1912, four again, and only one 
was authorized. 

There is no just quarrel with Mr. Eoose- 
velt or Mr. Taft, however, for their atti- 
tudes were entirely obedient to and ex- 
pressive of the popular w^ill. There is not 
the slightest doubt that had they followed 
the recommendations of the general board. 



The National Defense 85 

building so hugely during years of peace, 
a wave of revolt would have swept the 
country. Where quarrel is just, however, 
is with Mr. Roosevelt and his partizans 
for the dishonesty that seeks to place full 
blame for naval inadequacy upon Mr. Wil- 
son, even going so far as to assert that 
German superiority came after 1912, and 
not before. 

It is easy indeed to tell to-day what 
should have been done, but the proper time 
for this competency to have displayed itself 
was ten years ago. The honest thing 
for present concern, however, is not past 
neglects, but future plans. The Dem- 
ocratic majority in Congress meets the 
challenge of the times with this naval pro- 
gram; 

A three-year building program, author- 
izing the construction of one hundred and 
fifty-seven new ships, and calling for an 
appropriation of $588,180,576. 

It is planned to spend $316,818,343 
straight .oif, and the follov/ing ships will 
be begun at once : 



86 Wilson and the Issues 

Battleships 4 

Battle cruisers 4 

Scout cruisers 4 

Destroyers 20 

Coast submarines: 

800-ton type 3 

Smaller type 27 

Fuel ship 1 

Ammunition ship 1 

Hospital ship 1 

Gunboat 1 

66 

Also a submarine to be equipped with the Nelf 
system of propulsion. 

The appropriation for aeronautics is 
$3,500,000; for ammunition, $19,485,000; 
$11,000,000 will be devoted to the building 
of a government armor-plate factory; and 
all navy-yards will be enlarged to build 
capital ships. 

The personnel of the navy is increased 
from 51,500 to 74,700, and the President 
is given power to raise the number to 87,- 
000 in time of war. 

Admiral Dewey, after careful scrutiny 



The National Defense 87 

of every item, is on record with the state- 
ment that it is *'the best bill ever passed 
by Congress.'' The program restores the 
United States to second place in the list 
of sea powers, and provides the nation 
with a strong, well-balanced, splendidly 
manned navy fit for every emergency. 

It may be that the preparedness program 
of the Wilson administration will not suit 
those who entertain a dream of conquest 
and aggression, but it should meet the ap- 
proval of all who are sincerely in favor of 
an adequate national defense. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE CASE OF JOSEPHUS DANIELS 

^^1 want the people of the United States to 
k7iow that it is all right with the Navy. There 
is 710 demoralization, no lack of discipliiie, no 
lack of enthusiasm. The attacks are as false as 
many of them are shameful. The last three 
years have hcen wonderful years. I have been 
in the Navy since 1854, and both in material and 
personnel, we are more efficient to-day than ever 
before. The Naval bill is the best bill ever 
adopted by any Congress." — Admiral George 
Dewey's statement to the author. 

JOSEPHUS DANIELS, secretary of the 
navy, is at once the most maligned and 
most misunderstood man in the United 
States to-day. To wade through the lies 
that have been told about him, to discover 
the truths that have been hidden or dis- 
torted, is to come to a new loathing of the 
greed that poisons when thwarted and to 

88 



The Case of Josephus Daniels 89 

an added contempt for the public that takes 
no larger interest in a public servant than 
to swallow every slander circulated about 
him. 

Ask the average citizen about Josephus 
Daniels, and he '11 Avag his head and mouth 
something about mountebank and demo- 
gogue. Press him for details, and he can 
cite none more definite than vague gener- 
alizations that Daniels has *4et the navy 
run down'' and has ^*made us a laughing 
stock. ' ' 

This derision is the price that Josephus 
Daniels has been made to pay for saving 
millions of the people's money from the 
traffickers in armor plate and munitions; 
for breaking up the arm-chair clique that 
ruled the navy for years ; for making merit 
the test of promotion rather than social 
pull ; for opening the doors of advancement 
to the enlisted man. He has given us a 
navy that, according to Admiral George 
Dewey, **is not excelled, except in size, by 
the fleet of any nation in the world." 
Facts and figures entitle him to rank with 



90 Wilson and the Issues 

the greatest secretaries of history, and yet 
so well have his enemies wrought that many 
of the people for whom he has labored grin 
at his name. 

Virtually all of this ridicule has flowed 
from his abolition of the wine mess. Back 
in 1899, Secretary Long issued an order 
forbidding the sale or issue of liquor to 
enlisted men on board ship, and all that 
Mr. Daniels did was to extend the rule to 
officers, taking the step upon the official 
recommendation of the surgeon-general of 
the navy. This policy, which was to make 
the United States the *^ laughing stock" of 
the nations, was followed within the year 
by all other world powers. Eussia and 
France first, then Lord Charles Beresford 
scored the use of liquor in the British navy, 
and after that Kaiser Wilhelm, addressing 
the German naval cadets, uttered these 
words : 

*'The next war and the next sea-battle de- 
mand sound nerves of you. Nerves will decide. 
These become undermined through alcohol. . . . 
The nation which consumes the least alcohol wins, 



The Case of Josephus Daniels 91 

and that should be you, my gentlemen. And 
through you an example should be given the 
crews. And in consequence of this I expect of 
you . . . that you take heed thereto, and provide 
that indulgence in alcohol be not counted as be- 
longing to your privileges. ' ' 

In the Hearst papers, most active in ridi- 
culing the '^ grape- juice" order, pages are 
devoted to proving that all of the great 
businesses of the country are refusing to 
employ men who drink. Yet for the fore- 
sight that enabled Josephus Daniels to 
point a way to the nations he is denounced. 

Another lie was to the effect that he had 
made an order for officers and men to mess 
together, and that he surrendered the idea 
only when informed that black men and 
white might be brought together at the 
same table. No such order was ever made 
or even contemplated. A great outcry was 
manufactured as a result of his refusal to 
permit naval officers to deliver public ad- 
dresses and otherwise - seek to influence 
legislation. This has been the law of the 
navy from time immemorial, and President 



92 Wilson and the Issues 

Koosevelt, in 1902, and President Taft, in 
1909, reinforced the rule by executive or- 
ders that established dismissal as a pen- 
alty for violation. Secretary Daniels 
*^ muzzled" no one, simply inforcing the 
iron regulation that forbade officers from 
running about the country for purposes of 
propaganda. In order that all possible 
legitimate information might be afforded, 
however, he made public the full reports 
of the general board, never done before, 
and urged the congressional committee to 
call before it all officers of the navy with 
any pretense to authoritative knowledge. 

Some snapshots were being taken on 
board ship, and as Secretary Daniels had 
left his hat below, he borrowed an officer's 
cap. He made some laughing remark 
about its effect upon his appearance, and 
this was twisted into an attack upon the 
naval uniform. Once he spoke at a Y. M. 
C. A. meeting, and at its close was asked 
by the superintendent to have his picture 
taken with the boys. It is this picture that 
has been hawked about and printed in an 



The Case of Joseplius Daniels 93 

endeavor to prove the charge that Secre- 
tary Daniels is a ^'demagogue." It is as- 
serted that Secretary Daniels deprived the 
kin of an enlisted man of the customary 
death gratuity should he lose his life while 
on liberty. The law on this subject was 
passed in 1912, and states specifically that 
the only cause for withholding payment 
shall be when death is due to the miscon- 
duct of the deceased. We bought eight 
search-lights from a German inventor, and 
tendered him a second order for twelve 
more at $3,960 apiece, as set down in his 
bid. The manufacturers did not desire the 
contract, requesting a new award at $5200 
but the Navy awarded the contract to the 
inventor, who, by reason of getting it, will 
be paid $25,000 under his contract with the 
manufacturer. This transaction consti- 
tutes the base of the charge that the United 
States navy robbed a stranger and took ad- 
vantage of him. Nothing has been too 
mean, too false, or too vicious to say and 
circulate. 

Such attacks, of course, are mere blinds. 



94 Wilson and the Issues 

The real causes of the campaign of hatred 
against Secretary Daniels are not to be 
found on the surface, but deep down in 
the mud of human greed. The powder 
trust hates him because he is manufactur- 
ing smokeless powder for thirty-four cents 
a pound as against the fifty to eighty cents 
that used to be paid to the monopoly. In 
1915 alone $1,115,793 was saved, and this 
year the capacity is doubled. The projec- 
tile-makers hate him because he cut out 
$1,077,210 on one bid alone, and is asking 
Congress for money to build his own plant. 
The grafters hate him because his econo- 
mies have effected a reduction of fifteen- 
odd millions on public work at shore sta- 
tions. The armor-plate monopoly hates 
him because he made them lop off $1,110,- 
084 that was headed for its pockets, and 
has caused a bill to be introduced for a 
government plant where armor can be man- 
ufactured for $230 a ton as against the 
$440 exacted by the trust. Back in 1900, 
Congress appropriated $4,000,000 for a 
government armor plant unless contracts 



The Case of Josephus Daniels 95 

could be made at ^^a reasonable and equi- 
table figure,'' but Secretaries Moody, Mor- 
ton, Bonaparte, and Meyer were unable 
to see the extortion of the monopoly, and 
paid out over $76,000,000 in excessive 
prices. Contractors hate him because he 
established an inspection system that ended 
the foisting of wormy, rotting supplies 
upon enlisted men. 

When Secretary Daniels took office, he 
found an investment of millions in navy- 
yards going to waste. Many stations were 
closed, and the others were used for petty 
repairing, so as not to infringe upon the 
profits of private companies. He opened 
them up to full capacity and new uses, and 
to-day every one is aiding naval construc- 
tion and saving millions. Everything that 
is being manufactured by the Government 
is produced at from twenty to sixty per 
cent, less than the old private purchase 
price. Every dollar saved has been an 
addition to the hate felt for Josephus Dan- 
iels, but since these thwarted traffickers do 
not dare to come out in the open they make 



96 Wilson and the Issues 

their appeal to the laughter of fools by 
*' grape-juice'^ witticisms and a multitude 
of silly lies. 

Another source of bitter opposition 
springs from Mr. Daniels's efforts to de- 
mocratize the navy. Through the years a 
certain aristocratic pretension, as amaz- 
ing as it is alarming, has been permitted 
to grow, fixing a barrier between officers 
and men as definite and insurmountable as 
the barrier between the peasantry and no- 
bility of Europe. Two American boys, 
for instance, may decide upon a naval 
career; one, possessing the necessary in- 
fluence, receives an appointment to An- 
napolis, while the other, lacking influence, 
signs enlistment-papers. Straightway a 
social gulf yawns between them, even 
though sons of the same father, Annapolis 
converting the one into a superior being, 
enlistment dooming the other to inferior- 
ity. It was this undemocratic, un-Ameri- 
can order of things that Josephus Daniels 
set out to change, and the naval aristoc- 
racy, lacking the courage to fight openly, 



The Case of Josephus Daniels 97 

has joined the war-triffickers in the circula- 
tion of those vague charges that Daniels 
has ** demoralized the navy," and *'let it 
run down." AVhat are the facts in the 
case? 

A first radical step made by Mr. Daniels 
was the establishment of a school on each 
ship in order that the enlisted men might 
have an opportunity for academic and tech- 
nical education. His second step consisted 
in gaining the right to appoint fifteen en- 
listed men to Annapolis every year, with 
the understanding, of course, that they pass 
the required examinations. He asked for 
twenty-five, but Senator Weeks of Massa- 
chusetts, himself a graduate of Annapolis, 
succeeded in beating the number down. 

In 1914, with only a few months to pre- 
pare, five enlisted men qualified; in 1915 
there were eight, and this year twenty- 
three passed the examinations. It may be 
seen from this how much of American abil- 
ity and American aspiration has been re- 
pressed by the artistocratic prejudices of 
the past. As for the ** demoralizing" ef- 



98 Wilson and the Issues 

f ects worked upon the navy by the recogni- 
tion of education and ambition as inalien- 
able rights, a search through the records 
discloses these facts: 

When Mr. Daniels took office on March 
1, 1913, the navy was exactly 5000 men 
short of the number allowed by law; only 
fifty-two per cent, of the men discharged 
in good standing were reenlisting; during 
the four years of the Taft administration 
there were 10,360 desertions ; there was an 
average of 1800 tnen in prison, and 
throughout the service was sullenness and 
unrest. 

As a result of the Daniels reforms, 6365 
enlistments were gained, and for the first 
time in history the navy had a waiting-list ; 
eighty-five per cent, of discharges reen- 
listed instead of fifty-two per cent.; the 
number of prisoners dropped from eighteen 
hundred to seven hundred, permitting the 
restoration of two prison-ships and two 
disciplinary barracks to normal uses, and 
desertions were reduced fifty per cent. 

Newspapers and magazines have devoted 



The Case of Joseplius Daniels 99 

columns to telling wliat anonymous naval 
officers think of Josephus Daniels, but 
never one has given so much as a para- 
graph to the opinions of the more than 
fifty thousand enlisted men that make the 
navy. Yet they are expressed openly in 
every issue of ^'Our Na^^,'' the monthly 
published by ex-sailors and subscribed to 
by every blue-jacket. No subsidized jour- 
nal this, but a straight-talking, hard-fight- 
ing magazine that past administrations 
have tried to crush on account of its per- 
sistent and unsparing condemnation of in- 
justices and abuses. The following ex- 
cerpts from its editorial pages, selected at 
random, may serve to acquaint the public 
with the ideas and convictions of the young 
Americans upon whose loyalty the national 
safety largely depends : 

Let the hand-picked editors hurl their 
boughten bolts. Let them shout of '* seething 
discontent" in the fleet. It is not among the 
men, Josephus Daniels, you can take our word for 
that. You stand ace high so far with the 51,500. 
Don't let any of the moss-backs get you worried 



100 Wilson and the Issues 

or tell you what the men think. They don't 
know anything about the men, and care less. 
You could do lots of little things you haven't 
done, but you have done enough to show that your 
heart is in the right place. There are some big 
people after you but they can't buy the loyalty 
of the American bluejacket. Go after 'em, Sec- 
retary Daniels. We 're back of you, 51,500 
strong! . . . 

Mr. Daniels realized at once what our navy 
had been pointing out for years that there was 
something radically wrong with the human side 
of the Service, and that this wrong would have to 
be righted before we could hope to have a Navy 
full up with self-respecting American citizens. 
The trained Naval officers — experts — told Mr. 
Daniels that this was nonsense — that you would 
have no trouble handling men as long as you had 
plenty of masters-at-arms, and that the reason the 
Navy was short of men was that it had always 
been that way and always would be. 

Mr. Daniels replied that only in exceptional in- 
stances had the Navy been making good its prom- 
ises made to induce men to enlist, and that he 
intended to see if there was not some way of re- 
taining good men after they had received four 
years' training. He toned down the recruiting 
literature ; instituted his system of regarding the 
American sailorman as a human being; set the 



The Case of Josephus Daniels 101 

sailorman free; almost abolished the rating of 
master-at-arms, which was the mainstay of other 
administrations; and he has made an enlistment 
in the Navy the crowning privilege of the Ameri- 
can youth. 

And the wisenheimers who said from the first 
that he was wrong are being hard put to it to find 
a sizeable brick to heave at the genial Secretary. 
From the start, money in scads was flung to the 
anvil chorus by certain interested parties due to 
Mr. Daniels's stand in regard to certain con- 
tractors who had been looting the Treasury. 
And this anvil chorus was swelled by the entire 
King Charles the Second contingent in the Navy, 
who saw in this man who did not wear a high silk 
hat a possible enemy to the idea that The King 
Can Do No Wrong. But Uncle Jo kept his head, 
and smiled, and worked, and now he can show 
more for his administration than any other Sec- 
retary of the Navy has ever been able to show. 

There is nothing of the Seventeenth Century 
or its methods in the make-up of the Hon. 
Josephus Daniels and a better man has yet to ap- 
pear as head of the Navy. 

Let the wolf pack howl. 

• •••••• 

Then there is a *' Divine Right" bunch in the 
Service who have it in for Secretary Daniels. 



102 Wilson and the Issues 

But we are proud to say that their breed is 
dwindling and a few more Secretaries like 
Daniels will scatter them to the four winds. 

These are the people that are now after Daniels, 
getting their cues and money from disgruntled 
contractors and outraged aristocrats. These 
sheets that belly always before the fairest wind 
are seeking to discredit with their silly flap- 
doodle a man who stands head and shoulders 
above all their kind. 

Let all praying sailors pray with fervency and 
zeal that we may never have another sleek, smug, 
silk-hat at the head of the United States Navy 
who will be guided by and heed the Dark Age 
ideas that came on down through the powdered 
dandies of the court of King Charles II into our 
own fair land and find exponents even in this en- 
lightened age in newspapers and magazines that 
are shameless enough to mention the enlisted man 
among their patrons. 

The "Army and Navy Journal" and its kin- 
dred sore-head, wailing, outraged Tory sheets 
may have their day again with snobbery and in- 
tolerance enthroned as gods in the Navy of a free 
and independent country, but we believe not. 
We trust that the American people will not per- 
mit the undoing of the good work, the square 
work and the just work which the Honorable 



The Case of Josephus Daniels 103 

Josephus Daniels is doing for the Navy and the 
enlisted man. 

Although the first midshipman to enter 
Annapolis nnder Mr. Daniels will not be 
graduated until 1917, he is blamed for the 
shortage of officers. Here again facts give 
the lie to prejudice. When the *^ country 
editor" took office, he discovered that the 
Eepublican administration had not only 
failed to increase the attendance at the 
Naval Academy, but had actually permit- 
ted the law to lapse that permitted two ap- 
pointments to each member of Congress. 
Secretary Daniels secured an extension of 
the law at once, followed this up by open- 
ing the doors of Annapolis to enlisted men, 
and in 1916 succeeded in having the con- 
gressional apportionment raised from two 
to three, making 531 additional appoint- 
ments immediate^ available. Altogether 
over 800 midshipmen have been added to 
the scraggly list handed over to him by 
his predecessor. As a further intelligent 
emergency measure, certain qualified civil- 



104 Wilson and the Issues 

ians — engineers, aviators, and instructors 
— have been assigned to Annapolis, reliev- 
ing line officers for military duty. 

At every point the offenses of Josephus 
Daniels have been the offenses of honesty, 
efficiency, and democracy. When he went 
into office he found a system of aides, each 
one standing as a buffer between the secre- 
tary and his bureaus, a plan that resulted in 
delay, confusion, red tape, and a tremen- 
dous amount of correspondence carried on 
between men in adjoining rooms. This 
system had been refused sanction by Con- 
gress time and again, but despite this 
refusal, the naval clique persisted in its 
retention. Mr. Daniels threw out these 
aides, not only because they had no legal 
status, but because he desired direct con- 
tact with his bureaus. His next step was 
to select heads for these bureaus, and here 
again he offended, for his selection was 
based entirely upon merit and not at all on 
social position. A volume in itself would 
be required to chronicle the economies, ef- 
ficiencies, and improvements of this soft- 



The Case of Josephus Daniels 105 

spoken Carolina dynamo, but there are cer- 
tain obvious gains that stand out, simple 
to record, easy to grasp. 

As a consequence of the Meyer policy 
in behalf of private profit, a navy-yard in- 
vestment of $120,000,000 was going to 
waste. Secretary Daniels opened up these 
yards not only to earn dividends, but for 
the added purposes of defeating extortion 
and providing for immediate navy needs. 
To-day two dreadnoughts are being com- 
pleted at the New York Navy Yard, and 
the keel of a third will be laid immediately; 
Mare Island has been fitted to build bat- 
tle-ships as well as auxiliary craft; Nor- 
folk and Charleston were equipped for the 
construction of destroyers, and Puget 
Sound and Portsmouth for the building of 
submarines ; at Boston building ways large 
enough for the construction of a ship of 
12,000 tons were provided, and on one ship 
alone enough was saved to pay for the im- 
provement ; the Philadelphia yard, used as 
a repair station, though situated in the 
heart of the greatest shipbuilding district 



106 Wilson and the Issues 

in America, was fitted up for building, 
and already has a transport near com- 
pletion, and action is being taken that 
will enable the Philadelphia, Norfolk, and 
Puget Sound yards to construct dread- 
noughts. 

In addition, torpedoes are being manu- 
factured at Newport at $1000 less than 
private purchase price, and the navy has 
158 additional torpedoes for every one hun- 
dred on hand in 1913 ; mines are turned out 
at Norfolk at a saving of $170 per mine, 
and the stock has been increased 244 per 
cent.; the capacity of the powder-factory 
has recently been increased from 3,000,000 
pounds per annum to 6,000,000 pounds; 
Charleston is making clothing stores that 
are sold at cost to the enlisted men; air- 
ships are building at Washington; at 
Portsmouth electrical apparatus is being 
manufactured at twenty per cent, less than 
private cost, and a projectile-factory has 
been authorized. 

When Mr. Daniels became head of the 
navy, there was no aviation station, no spe- 



The Case of Josephus Daniels 107 

cific appropriation for aeronautics, and 
only a few inadequate machines huddled 
at Annapolis. To remedy these lacks, he 
secured an initial appropriation of $1,000,- 
000 and opened the navy-yard at Pensa- 
cola, a $7,000,000 investment abandoned by 
Meyer, as an all-year aviation-station and 
training-school. Forty-three officers and 
one hundred and twenty men have been 
prepared, and provision made for one hun- 
dred and fifty additional officers and three 
hundred and fifty additional men. The 
utter failure of private firms to deliver or- 
dered machines has compelled the navy to 
take up the work of designing and building 
its own aircraft. 

The same condition existed w^ith regard 
to anti-aircraft guns, which have been 
designed, manufactured, and installed. 
Ships and submarines were without 
proper radio equipment, and this had to be 
installed, and a further improvement, in 
cooperation with the American Telephone 
and Telegraph company, was the success- 
ful installation of long-distance telephony, 



108 Wilson and the Issues 

long-distance telegraphy, and radio tele- 
phoning. 

The submarines, so much the subject of 
ridicule, were built before Mr. Daniels took 
office. It has been his task to have weak- 
nesses discovered and faults remedied, and 
as a result of the work of naval experts, 
the submarines now building and author- 
ized will be second to none in the world in 
fitness. 

With reference to target practice, he 
found the marksmanship poor. Such, 
however, were the reforms he instituted 
that in November, 1915, Admiral Fletcher 
made this report, '^The scores recorded at 
the last target practice were higher than 
ever before made in the open sea, and show 
not only an increase in accuracy of point- 
ing, but in rapidity of fire as well.'' Over 
ninety per cent, of the shots at longest 
ranges would have hit an enemy's ships. 

Out of his own foresight. Secretary Dan- 
iels evolved the idea of an ^' ocean Platts- 
burg, ' ' which will provide a month of naval 
training for at least 2500 men, fitting them 



The Case of Josephus Daniels 109 

for admission to tlie naval reserve. Also 
Kear-Admiral Knight, president of the 
War College, where high officers of the 
navy are instructed in strategy and tactics, 
offers this statement, ^'Secretary Daniels 
has done more for the War College than 
any of his predecessors." 

And last, but most important of all, per- 
haps, it remained for the ^'country editor,'' 
with his suggestion of the naval consult- 
ing board, to give the preparedness cam- 
paign its very biggest idea. To-day, as a 
consequence, 30,000 of the country's lead- 
ing scientists, technicians, and engineers, 
under the leadership of Thomas A. Edi- 
son, are giving unselfishly of their time 
to the great and necessary work of mo- 
bilizing the industrial resources of the na- 
tion and the creation of an industrial re- 
serve. Laughed at in the beginning by 
every fool and rascal as another proof of 
Daniels's rusticism, its real tremendous- 
ness is now realized. 

Taken from any angle, considered from 
any point of view, whether it be as sturdy 



110 Wilson and the Issues 

Democrat, masterful executive, or efficient 
administrator, and this man Josephus 
Daniels measures big. If the attack upon 
him, inspired by criminal greed and 
abetted by venal, conscienceless writers, is 
permitted to succeed, then will the people 
of the United States have confessed such 
utter stupidity, indifference, and ingrati- 
tude as will work to encourage dishonesty 
and inefficiency, even while serving notice 
on all public servants that honor and faith- 
fulness are offenses. 



CHAPTER VIII 



^'AMERICA FIEST^' 



THE Republican party shows shrewd- 
ness, if not patriotism, in deciding to 
base its entire attack upon President Wil- 
son's foreign policy, to the exclusion of all 
other issues. Not only does the decision 
permit the wildest possible appeal to all 
that is cheap, mean, and truculent, but it 
diverts attention from President Wilson's 
domestic policies, a prime requisite to Re- 
publican success. 

Considering the fact that he has had to 
work through Congress, torn by its parti- 
zan, sectional, and personal prejudices, it 
is amazing indeed to mark this man's rec- 
ord of tremendous achievement. Con- 
fronted from the first by a press of prob- 
lems handed down from the Roosevelt and 

Taft administrations, in no instance has 

111 



112 Wilson and the Issues 

he evaded, in no instance ignored, meeting 
every exigency with the same unswerving 
faith in democracy and democratic ideals. 

The tariff was a first test. Even though 
the Democratic promise of revision down- 
ward had been explicit, the fact that many 
Democratic States relied heavily upon pro- 
tected industries soon evolved a spirit of 
compromise and evasion. Had Woodrow 
Wilson been less than courageous, less than 
honest, he would have conciliated the pro- 
tectionists in his party by consenting to a 
partial redemption of the platform pledge. 
Instead of that, he insisted upon complete 
compliance, rendering a service to America 
the value of which only historians will be 
able to compute. 

Tariff legislation, more than any other 
one thing, was the source of the corruption 
that rotted public service, and in the growth 
of the sinister privileges fostered by the 
system there was almost sole responsibility 
for the perversion of American ideals. 
Woodrow Wilson cut out the cancer, and 
freed the nation from a creeping death. 



''America First" 113 

States that were rendered parasitic by pub- 
lic largesse began to struggle back to intel- 
ligent industry. Everywhere, from coast 
to coast, endeavor took on a wider, more 
virile sweep after being stood upon its own 
feet and forced to rely on its own resources. 

Instead of factories closing, factories 
opened, and at every point the gloomy 
prophecies of the Eoots and Lodges were 
shown to be stock bugbears. On July 1, 
1914, there was also a trade balance in 
America's favor just $300,000,000 larger 
than the one shown by the Payne law the 
year before, and every day saw the theories 
of protection offering feebler resistance to 
the facts of the Underwood law. The war, 
however, returned the subject to the prov- 
ince of debate, but even while political 
storehouses were being rummaged for the 
old arguments. President Wilson an- 
nounced that he would include a tariff com- 
mission in the list of things to be done. 

Until the passage of the Federal Eeserve 
Act, Wall Street ruled the United States; 
bankers poured railroads, great enter- 



114 Wilson and the Issues 

prises, and depositors' money into a ma- 
gician's hat and then showed it empty; a 
rigid, inelastic financial system choked 
credit, hampered legitimate development, 
and put the business of the country at the 
mercy of panics that carried wholesale ruin 
in their train. For years currency revision 
had been a cry of the people, and for years 
the Eepublican party had refused to rem- 
edy the indefensible conditions. Making 
the Federal Eeserve bill an administration 
measure, and disregarding the advice of 
his party leaders. President Wilson drove 
it through the special session of 1913 in the 
face of bitter opposition and misunder- 
standing. Senator Elihu Eoot, leading the 
Republican opposition, branded the act as 
a '^financial heresy" that would entail dis- 
aster utter and absolute, and both in Sen- 
ate and House his following voted solidly 
against the bill. 

To-day the legislation is seen as a rod 
of Moses. By measuring the ruin wrought 
by the panics of 1903 and 1907, when con- 
ditions were normal, there may be gained 



^'America First'' 115 

some approximation of tlie enormity of 
the panic that would have occurred in 1914 
but for the Federal Reserve Act. Under 
its provisions, $386,000,000 of emergency 
currency was issued during the gloomy 
August of that year, and not a bank closed 
its doors, not a business went to the wall. 
Credit has been released from its long im- 
prisonment, government moneys provided 
for the movement of crops, and for the first 
time in history pawnbroking and usury 
have been divorced from banking. 

In their fight against Shylockism may be 
found the reason why Secretary McAdoo 
and Comptroller John Skelton Williams are 
so hated. Their investigations uncovered 
the scandal that 2743 national banks out 
of a total of 7613 were guilty of grossest 
usury, charging interest rates that ran all 
the way from 10 per cent, to 2400 per cent. 
■ Not only have they stopped these usurious 
practices, but by virtue of powers con- 
ferred by the Federal -Eeserve Act they 
have forced many bank officials to restore 
misappropriated thousands. 



116 Wilson and the Issues 

During the first year's operation of the 
act the deposits of the national banks in- 
creased $2,081,530,164, and loans and dis- 
counts increased $917,450,502, while sur- 
plus reserves exceeded by $592,000,000 the 
greatest surplus reserves ever held before. 
In August, 1914, the United States owed 
Europe $350,000,000 of floating indebted- 
ness maturing prior to January 1, 1915. 
Not only has this debt been wiped out, but 
we have taken back from Europe about 
one thousand million dollars' worth of 
American securities held there for invest- 
ment. 

Is it any wonder that Mr. Hughes and 
the Republicans prefer to discuss Belgium 
rather than the Federal Eeserve Act, which 
has lifted the shadow of disaster from a 
nation 1 

The Federal Trade Commission is the 
Wilson answer to unfair competition and 
uncurbed monopoly. It bears the same re- 
lation to industry that the Interstate Com- 
merce Commission bears to railroads, 
and as its operation grows in certainty, 



^"^ America First" 117 

lawless greed will be subjected to increas- 
ing restraints and punishments. Its pres- 
ent inquiry into the soaring prices of 
anthracite, for instance, explains why the 
coal lords are denouncing Mr. Wilson as a 
menace, and urging the election of Mr. 
Hughes. 

In a final desperate effort to save ancient 
privileges to the banking interests, the Ee- 
publican platform squarely attacked the 
principle of rural credits. On the heels of 
the attack. President Wilson succeeded in 
pushing the legislation through Congress, 
and justice to the farmers of the nation is 
now embodied in law. By putting low- 
rate, long-time loans at the disposal of 
those who desire to buy land, purchase 
equipment, or make improvements, the 
farming population is released from the 
grip of usurers and restored to their old 
hope and ambition. 

The Clayton Anti-Trust Law has well 
been termed the Magna Charta of labor. 
It secures to the working-man the right of 
voluntary association for his protection 



118 Wilson and the Issues 

and welfare; it brouglit an end to the il- 
legal and unwarranted issuance of writs 
of injunction; it declared in effect that 
human labor was no longer to be regarded 
as a commodity, and set down the rule that 
no judge should henceforth have the right 
to send men to jail for constructive con- 
tempt without a jury trial or representia- 
tion by counsel. 

With increasing force, industry has 
rested upon the backs of two million little 
children, and neither during the adminis- 
trations of Mr. Taft nor of Mr. Eoosevelt 
was any courageous effort made to end an 
evil, shocking condition. President Wil- 
son insisted upon the introduction of a bill 
that would release the boys and girls of 
America from the steel jaws of the indus- 
trial machine, and when political chicanery 
bade fair to prevent its passage, he went 
personally to the Capitol, and informed 
the Democratic leaders that the dictates of 
humanity must be obeyed. The Child-La- 
bor Law, rescuing two million children 
from the destructive processes of prema- 



''America First" 119 

ture toil, is in itself a greater preparedness 
measure than even the naval bill. 

Out of regard for the health of the 
worker, eight-hour-day laws were passed, 
applicable to all work done by the Govern- 
ment as well as for all w^ork done for the 
Government; out of regard for the rights 
of the worker, a department of labor was 
created. Merely as an example of the 
splendid activities thus released, the em- 
ployment bureau has found jobs for more 
than 70,000 toilers, and secured over 
$7,000,000 in earnings for them. 

The Workmen's Compensation bill 
rounds out a remarkable record of humane 
achievement, and to complete the social 
justice program decided upon by President 
Wilson, the St. Louis convention pledged 
the Democratic party to these principles 
of action: 

A minimum-wage standard for working- 
women; the prohibition of night work for 
women, and the eight-hour day for women 
and young persons ; one day of rest in seven 
for all wage-earners; the abolition of the 



120 Wilson and the Issues 

convict-labor contract system, substituting 
jDrison production for government con- 
sumption, and applying the earnings of 
inmates to the support of their families; 
safety and sanitation measures. 

Of no less importance to the great work- 
ing-mass is the Wilson insistence that pre- 
paredness shall be paid for by a tax 
on incomes, inheritances, and munitions. 
From these sources $300,000,000 will be 
raised that would otherwise have been col- 
lected by taxes on things that the poor 
consume. 

As for conservation of the natural re- 
sources, the Lane measures are the last 
word in sane protection of the people's 
domain, while in Alaska a successful ex- 
periment in government operation is be- 
ing carried on. For eight years a Eepub- 
lican administration had kept the wealth of 
Alaska imprisoned. Upon recommenda- 
tion of Woodrow Wilson, $43,000,000 was 
appropriated for the building of a railroad, 
the operation of which has made for de-: 
velopment in the popular interest. 



"America First'' 121 

Aside from the extension of the parcels 
post, the Wilson administration has set 
aside $85,000,000 with which to aid the sev- 
eral States in the construction of highways. 
Not alone is this an aid to commerce and 
a development of agriculture, but it opens 
up new territory to rural delivery, and in 
its essence is an important feature of the 
preparedness program. 

At every point Woodrow Wilson has 
stood like iron against the oligarchic influ- 
ences that controlled the Eepublican party. 
Just as his attitude toward the Chinese 
loan served notice on high finance that the 
navy of the United States could not be used 
as a collection agency, and just as his ap- 
pointment of Brandeis and Clarke declared 
that the Supreme Court was in no sense 
the personal property of the privileged in- 
terests, so did his stand in the Panama 
Canal tolls controversy prove his courage 
and his democracy. It is true enough that 
there were no if s in that clause in the Hay- 
Pauncefote treaty which said that *^the 
canal shall be free and open to vessels of 



122 Wilson and the Issues 

commerce and of war of all nations observ- 
ing these rules on terms of absolute equal- 
ity.'' Language could not be more ex- 
plicit. 

The forces of privilege, however, had the 
same vital interests in compelling the vio- 
lation of this treaty as in securing the 
recognition of Huerta, for in toll exemp- 
tions the coastwise shipping monopoly saw 
chance to obtain the subsidies denied by a 
fixed public policy. 

The charge was made openly that Presi- 
dent Wilson had entered into some secret 
and humiliating bargain with Great Brit- 
ain; he was pictured in innumerable car- 
toons as a flunky to George V, and racial 
bigotries were played upon unceasingly in 
order that the waters of calm discussion 
might be muddied by hatred and prejudice. 

Had Woodrow Wilson been ** practical," 
he would have kept silent, permitting the 
Taft legislation to stand, or, seeing the 
storm of seemingly adverse sentiment, 
backed out of his dilemma with a graceful 
and explanatory wave of the hand in the 



""America First'" 123 

direction of the *^ rugged democracy of 
America. ' ' 

Of a certainty there was justification for 
such a course in precedent. Only a few- 
years before, President Eoosevelt, to use 
his own words, ^'took the canal zone and 
let Congress debate." The desires of the 
chattel-slavery interests played large part 
in the Mexican war of 1846, our Indian 
treaties have been violated on the score of 
material interest, expediency has domi- 
nated our attitude to the Filipinos, and 
America 's promise to Cuba was evaded by 
the addition of the Piatt amendment to the 
Cuban constitution. 

Woodrow Wilson, however, went back to 
the Declaration of Independence for his 
precedent, spanning the years of material- 
istic trick and compromise, and when he 
spoke these words to Congress, it was as 
though Patrick Henry and Thomas Jeffer- 
son lived again: 

We consented to the treaty; its language we 
accepted if we did not originate it ; and we are 
too big, too powerful, too seK-respecting a nation 



124 Wilson and the Issues 

to interpret with a too strained or refined reading 
the words of our own promises just because we 
have power enough to give us leave to read them 
as we please. The large thing to do is the only 
thing we can afford to do, a voluntary withdrawal 
from a position everywhere questioned and mis- 
understood. We ought to reverse our action 
without raising the question whether we were 
right or wrong, and so deserve once more our 
reputation for generosity, and for the redemption 
of every obligation without quibble or hesi- 
tation. 

It was the first test of strength between 
an awakened idealism and an intrenched 
materialism. Who can have forgotten 
how, in the opening days of the debate, 
servants of privilege leaped at what seemed 
fair opportunity to work the President's 
defeat and humiliation! 

Too much significance cannot be at- 
tached to this victory. The issue was 
clean-cut between money and justice, be- 
tween practicality and principles, between 
the arrogant privileged interests and the 
unorganized mass. In the utter rout of 
the profit-mongers it may be seen how lit- 



''America First" 125 

tie they expressed or represented the deep, 
underlying passions of America. 

With regard to the seamen of America, 
for fifteen years Andrew Furuseth haunted 
Congress in the effort to secure legislation 
that would put an end to slavery, oppres- 
sion, and actual degradation. Not until 
Woodrow Wilson came into office did he 
meet with a President of sufficient strength 
and independence to put humanity above 
profits. What Lincoln's Emancipation 
Proclamation was to eight million bond- 
men, the Wilson Seamen's Act is to those 
men who go down to the sea in ships, for 
its provisions not only lift American sail- 
ors from their depths, but likewise the 
sailors of every other nationality. 

The one Wilson defeat, brought about by 
a Republican filibusterer, was the shipping 
bill of 1914. To-day that defeat is seen to 
have been a crime against the people of the 
United States. The extortionate ocean- 
freight rates paid by helpless shippers and 
producers in the last twelve months have 
more than trebled the $40,000,000 that was 



126 Wilson and the Issues 

asked to be spent by the Government on 
mercbant vessels. In actual value alone 
the ships would "have doubled. Aside from 
these determinable losses, there are the in- 
calculable losses sustained through inabil- 
ity to ship at all. Lack of ships, as well as 
prohibitory rates, have operated to keep 
the United States from taking advantage 
of the extraordinary demand for coal, lum- 
ber, and supplies of all kinds in Europe 
and South America. Senators Gallinger 
and Lodge perpetuated the monopoly of the 
shipping trust, but in so doing they lost 
millions to the people of the United States. 
The Wilson democracy of 1914, the Ee- 
publican subsidy hope of 1914, were both 
transferred to 1916, but with the change 
that the shipping bill was now a vital part 
of the preparedness plan. Out of the navy 
department came a demand for a merchant- 
marine auxiliary. Naval authorities, back- 
ing the demand, pointed out that the strong- 
est fleet is crippled to weakness unless pos- 
sessed of craft to bear its coal, provisions, 
and supplies, and gave facts to prove the 



'"America First'' 127 

folly of trusting to purchase or charter to 
supply such craft in a time of crisis. 

The declaration of war against Spain in 
1898 found the navy without auxiliary 
craft, and as a consequence, exorbitant 
amounts had to be paid for fit and unfit ves- 
sels. At the close of the war these vessels, 
for which the Government paid $18,000,000, 
were sold as junk at a loss of eighty per 
cent. 

A merchant-marine naval auxiliary must 
be had. What, then, when the ships are 
built? Shall they lie idle and rot in our 
harbors? The Wilson bill disputes this 
absurdity by wise provision that the auxil- 
iary craft shall serve the needs of Ameri- 
can commerce in times of peace. For fifty 
years the United States has waited for pri- 
vate capital to prove an American mer- 
chant marine, and for an equal time our 
foreign trade has dwindled. It has re- 
mained for the Wilson administration to 
meet these just demands of commerce, even 
while insuring an efficient naval auxiliary 
and an essential naval reserve personnel. 



128 Wilson and the Issues 

At every point in the Wilson record 
there is evidence of the idealist in action. 
Few Presidents have ever joined vision and 
leadership in such high degree, and cer- 
tainly not one has equaled him in achieve- 
ment. Welding a party of opposition into 
a great constructive force, he has put foun- 
dations under honest business, defeated 
cruelty and injustice, thrown the mantle of 
protection over the mother and the child, 
and recovered the courage, the pride, and 
the creative genius of the American people. 

Never was choice so plain. It is between 
a record and mere claims; between a 
proved democrat and the captains who 
served under Hanna ; between equal justice 
and special privilege; between Woodrow 
Wilson, w^ho expresses *^ America First'' 
in law and action, and those who cry 
** America First'' to divert attention from 
their usuries, oppressions, and rapacities. 



CHAPTER IX 

* ^ANYTHING TO BEAT WILSON '' 

THE politics of America have reached 
low levels at various times, but it re- 
mained for the betrayal of the Progressive 
cause to plumb new depths of baseness. 
]\rore nearly than any other like occurrence 
the wretched business epitomizes the sor- 
didness, the selfishness, and the dishonesty 
that have operated to hamper the develop- 
ment of democracy. 

While the Progressive party had its 
source in Republican schism, it ceased al- 
most instantly to be factional, for to its 
banners rallied thousands of earnest, free- 
thinking men and women sick and tired of 
the older organizations, their hypocrisies 
and their failures. A great and noble plat- 
form, establishing submerged ideals as 
fighting principles, lifted the movement 

129 



130 Wilson and the Issues 

high above the vulgarities of partizanship, 
and gave it the fervor of a crusade. 

Not even defeat had power to chill en- 
thusiasm or to weaken the splendid deter- 
mination that had for its object the expres- 
sion of the Declaration of Independence in 
terms of law and governmental action. 
They had their faith and hope and courage 
still, and still did they have their leader. 
Speaking on October 3, 1913, at a Progres- 
sive gathering, Mr. Koosevelt said : 

Men and women, I would continue the fight 
even if I stood entirely alone. I shall continue it 
with a glad and proud heart because it is made 
in your company. 

Win or lose, whatever the outcome, I am with 
you, and I am for this cause to fight to the end. 
We are dedicated in this great war for righteous- 
ness, and while life lasts we cannot and we will 
not abandon it. 

*'The men who believe that we will ever 
betray these ideals or abandon the task to 
which we have set ourselves do not know 
us and cannot ever guess at the faith that 
inspires us. 



''Anything to Beat Wilson" 131 

' ^ This movement will never go back, and 
whatever may betide in the future, of one 
thing the disciples of an easy opportunism 
may rest assured — I will never abandon 
the principles to which we Progressives 
have pledged ourselves, and I will never 
abandon the men and women who drew 
around me to tattle for these principles.^ ^ 

In 1914, desertions occurred. Self-seek- 
ing Eepublicans, who had joined the new 
party as a gamble, having realized the 
hopelessness of the Taft candidacy, re- 
turned to their old allegiance, and in the 
state of New York especially, even tried 
to carry the Progressive organization back 
with them. Mr. Eoosevelt stood firm, how- 
ever, and Mr. George W. Perkins expressed 
the bitter indignation of the rank and file 
in these words: 

^*The idea of trying to deliver voters 
en masse to another party seemed so ut- 
terly out of order and unfair, and seemed 
to be striking so at the very heart of our 
whole organization that after careful con- 
sideration and consultation with a number 



132 Wilson and the Issues 

of our friends, I decided to go to the Buf- 
falo meeting, whicli was by far the largest 
one, and protest, in the name of the Na- 
tional organization, against any such ac- 
tion. 

*^If there had been during this year or 
any time since 1912 any indication that the 
owners of the Kepublican party had in 
the slightest degree recognized their errors 
and reactionary inclinations, then the ques- 
tion of returning to that party might be a 
debatable one, but every one of us knows 
that they have shown no such inclination, 
and on the contrary, wherever they have 
had a chance, have been more reactionary 
than ever. 

^'Indeed the very fact of our returning 
now, with all the things that the Eepublican 
party has done since 1912, would have to 
be constructed as indorsing all these ac- 
tions, and as a complete surrender on our 
part and an acknowledgment that we were 
wrong in 1912, and would knuckle under 
and obey the men whom up to date we have 
denounced. ' ' 



''Anything to Beat Wilson'' 133 

The 1916 call for a second national con- 
vention met with a loyal response, and 
there was a certain pathetic Peter the Her- 
mit quality about the pilgrimage to Chi- 
cago. The majority of the delegates, poor 
in purse, borrowed and pawned, pinched 
and scraped, in order to attend, and as in 
1912, the gathering was marked by an ex- 
altation almost religious in its manifesta- 
tions. As far as the rank and file were 
concerned, the purposes of the convention 
were simple and crystal clear. Eoosevelt, 
as much as ever the idol, was to be nom- 
inated by acclamation, the principles of 
1912 were to be reaffirmed, and the Kepub- 
lican party left to do as it chose in the face 
of such decisive action. 

A first shock was the announcement of 
a policy of delay. A second blow was the 
spirit of compromise that possessed the 
leaders, eventuating in an actual invitation 
to the Eepublican organization for a 
^^friendly conference'' with a view to the 
*^ adjustment of differences." The days 
during which the Progressive conferrees 



134 Wilson and the Issues 

crooked their knees to such hated foes as 
Keed Smoot, Murray Crane, and Nicholas 
Murray Butler were days of mortal sick- 
ness for the men and women to whom 
Progressivism was in no sense political, 
but deeply spiritual. A third sledge swing 
at the foundations of faith was the reading 
of a platform that might well have been 
written by *' Uncle Joe'* Cannon, so utterly 
did it ignore the fighting principles of 1912, 
so completely was it a thing of concession 
and compromise. 

These bitternesses, however, were as 
nothing to the misery that gripped the con- 
vention when Mr. Koosevelt's suggestion 
of Henry Cabot Lodge as a compromise 
candidate gave the first intimation of deser- 
tion. The purposelessness of the insult, 
its stark brutality, stunned and sickened. 
Out of the shock, however, came a fierce 
anger that beat down the parliamentary 
barriers of the tricksters, and in one great 
triumphant rush the convention put an end 
to compromise by the nomination of Eoose- 
velt and Parker. It was what they had 



"Anything to Beat Wilson'' 135 

gathered for; leaders had given them the 
most solemn assurances that Mr. Eoose- 
velt would accept ; whatever pain at disap- 
pointment and indecision may have been 
in their hearts, not a mind was stained by 
doubt as to the answer of their hero with 
respect to the action taken. His declina- 
tion did more than murder a party; it 
crushed the faith of thousands. 

In the lightning flash of that moment 
many things stood clear. It was seen that 
just as the compelling Eoosevelt motive in 
1912 had been revenge upon Mr. Taft, so 
was the compelling Eoosevelt motive of 
1916 a blind and insensate hatred of Mr. 
Wilson. Never at any time did he have 
comprehension of, or sympathy with, the 
ideals of the Progressive party, regarding 
it solely as a hand-forged weapon with 
which to fight his enemies and to advance 
his own interests. 

Out of the tragedy, however, may come 
a great and lasting good. People have 
learned the lesson that the safety of demo- 
cratic institutions is best conserved by de- 



136 Wilson and the Issues 

votion to principles rather than devotion 
to personalities, and there is also reason 
to believe that this final exposure of invin- 
cible selfishness will result in the elimina- 
tion of a destructive, disintegrative force. 
With an effect of spontaneity that con- 
cealed cold-blooded premeditation, a gift 
of acting democratically that covered the 
set autocratic habit of his mental processes, 
a colossal egotism that passed for force, a 
scatter-mindedness that looked like broad- 
mindedness, and a passionate protestation 
that obscured his lack of performance, 
Theodore Roosevelt has been an Old Man 
of the Sea on the back of the nation. 

The whole life of the man made it clear 
that he would act in a crisis just as he did 
act with reference to the Progressive party. 
During the seven years that he sat in the 
Presidential chair, the number of monopo- 
listic combinations of business increased 
from 149 to 1020, during which time he re- 
fused steadfastly to give the Sherman 
Anti-Trust Law the effect that was in- 
tended; the Steel Trust, the Sugar Trust 



'' Anything to Beat Wilson" 137 

and the Harvester Trust were protected 
from prosecution by his hand; he said no 
word about a tariff that was robbing the 
great bulk of people ; it was in open defiance 
of law that he gave the Steel Trust per- 
mission to absorb the Tennessee Iron and 
Coal Company; he backed the iron despot- 
ism of Aldrich and Cannon in their fight 
against the Insurgents; and in 1904, as a 
candidate, he appointed as his campaign 
manager George B. Cortelyou, who, as sec- 
retary of commerce and labor, had been 
investigating corporations. 

Choosing Taft as his successor because 
Taft bore closest resemblance to putty, he 
forced him upon the party by the most un- 
scrupulous use of power and patronage. 
Conceiving the idea of a Presidential third 
term, he spared no effort to destroy and 
discredit the Taft administration, and when 
defeated in 1912 by the *' steam roller'' 
that was of his own creation, he set him- 
self to the task of revenge; 

Nothing so discloses the man's utter lack 
of iron convictions as his attitude with 



138 Wilson and the Issues 

regard to the platform that the Progres- 
sives declared in 1912. Not a single prin- 
ciple in the document but had received his 
tireless enmity as President, but under the 
urge of ambition and hate, almost over- 
night he discovered his passionate belief in 
the initiative, referendum, recall, equal 
suffrage, and the whole program of state 
socialism. 

Had his soul possessed one particle of 
sincerity or had he stirred to the slightest 
capacity for disinterested service, he would 
have been lifted to higher, finer levels by 
the love and devotion of the thousands that 
followed him. But not for a moment was 
he shaken out of his cold-blooded oppor- 
tunism and arrogant autocracy. His one 
thought in defeat was to divert the flood of 
democratic faith into the mean, narrow 
channels of self-advancement. Out of a 
crusade he built up a political machine, sub- 
stituting personal service for social serv- 
ice, personal loyalty for social loyalty, 
striving with all his might to transform a 
wonderful forward movement into an air- 



''Anything to Beat Wilson" 139 

tight corporation for his own selfish ends. 

It was never his intention to run only 
on the Progressive ticket. The Gary din- 
ner, at which he broke bread with the men 
that he had branded as malefactors, was an 
open announcement of his intention to re- 
turn to the Eepublican party. The seem- 
ingly insane denunciation of Wilson was 
calculated cunning, just as there was pre- 
meditation in his failure to mention social 
justice in a single speech or article. 
Taken together, they signified his willing- 
ness to serve and his recantation of ^^ luna- 
tic heresies." 

Only those blinded by hero-worship 
could have failed to see that the decision 
to hold the Progressive convention at the 
same time and in the same city as the Re- 
publican convention was in itself an ad- 
mission of dicker and barter. Treachery 
and betrayal were no sudden resolves, but 
the bitter fruit of careful planning. With- 
out doubt Mr. Eoosevelt expected to be 
made the Republican nominee. Equally 
without doubt the high and secret powers 



140 Wilson and the Issues 

were always as iron in their grim deter- 
mination to trick and destroy him. It was 
not that they feared his actions if restored 
to power, but that they hated him for his 
insolences, his weathercock variability, and 
his deceits. 

Eoot was their first choice, but when the 
hopelessness of that candidacy became ap- 
parent, they turned to Hughes. Why not? 
By his opposition to an income tax, his 
unchanging support of a high tariff, his 
vetoes of all bills designed to wring justice 
from the railroads, and his expressed belief 
in the righteousness of the established or- 
der, Charles Evans Hughes had proved his 
right to be considered ' ^ safe. ' ' The things 
that he had fought — bosses, graft, corrup- 
tion — were always symptoms, never causes. 

The sudden interest of Hitchcock, driver 
of the Republican steam roller in 1912, in 
the candidacy of Mr. Hughes had a vast 
significance for all who cared to observe. 
Nor was the quick growth of Hughes senti- 
ment among the delegates less rich in mean- 
ing. A hand-picked lot, chosen for their 



''Anything to Beat Wilson" 141 

subservience, not at any time did they reg- 
ister a single emotion or preference that 
was not prescribed. 

Deep and deeper into the mire of disas- 
ter was Mr. Roosevelt led. By encourag- 
ing him to believe that his attacks on Mr. 
Wilson were making him the * logical'' Re- 
publican candidate, they were steadily 
forcing him into a position where it would 
be impossible for him to support any but 
a Republican candidate. By suggesting 
that his nomination be brought about with 
an effect of stampede, they gained the four 
days of delay during which the humiliating 
conference was held, and a platform writ- 
ten that made a complete surrender of 
the principles that were the Progressive 
party's sole reason for existence. 

With the trap all set at last, they sprung 
it, and it was from behind bars that Mr. 
Roosevelt wrote his declination and issued 
the call that sought to deliver his follow- 
ers to Hughes even as he himself had been 
delivered. 

The ambition and weakness of the 



142 Wilson and the Issues 

leader stand exposed. It is the sincerity 
and strength of the rank and file that are 
now up for test. The revolt of 1912 was 
against the corrupt and sinister control that 
made the Republican party deaf to the voice 
of the people, responsive only to the com- 
mands of the privileged and predatory 
class. It was a revolt that took form in 
the declaration of principles to which every 
Progressive made oath of allegiance. To- 
day the selfsame men — Crane, Penrose, 
Hemenway, Butler, Watson, Kealing, 
Smoot — are in absolute control of the Re- 
publican organization, and the platform 
does not even give social justice the cour- 
tesy of mention. Those that go back can 
do so only at the price of honor, faith, 
and self-respect. 

With plans well laid for the annihilation 
of Roosevelt and the nomination of 
Hughes, the secret masters of the Repub- 
lican party issued orders that even the pre- 
tense of patriotism should be set aside in 
the interests of expediency. Frankly, even 
boldly, an alliance was arranged between 



''Anything to Beat Wilson'' 143 

the party of Lincoln and every evil force of 
disaffection. Almost from the very first 
professional German-Americans have been 
in open conspiracy against President Wil- 
son by reason of his steadfast refusal to 
sacrifice the law of nations and the faith 
of democracy to the militar}^ necessities of 
the Kaiser. He has dared to maintain 
American sovereignty and the admitted 
rights of America in defiance of Germany's 
military aims and objects. He has failed 
to acknowledge the suzerainty of Berlin, 
and has stood firm against the blackmail at- 
tempted to be levied through the threat of 
the *^ German- American vote.'' 

To these alien conspirators, then, the 
hand of welcome was extended. Compare 
the silence of the Eepublican platform with 
this splendid challenge that Woodrow Wil- 
son wrote personally into the Democratic 
declaration : 

We condemn all alliance and combinations of 
individuals in this country, of whatever national- 
ity or descent, who agree and conspire together 
for the purpose of embarrassing or weakening 



144 Wilson and the Issues 

our Government or of improperly influencing or 
coercing our public representatives in dealing 
or negotiating with any foreign power. "We 
charge that such conspiracies among a limited 
number exist and have been instigated for the 
purpose of advancing the interests of foreign 
countries to the prejudice and detriment of our 
country. 

We condemn any political party which, in view 
of the activity of such conspirators, surrenders 
its integrity or modifies its policy. 

While the alien conspiracy is incidental, 
the issue itself is fundamental. Just as an 
undivided allegiance is the beginning of 
government, so is divided allegiance the 
end of government. Democratic institu- 
tions exist by sufferance when the balance 
of political power is in the hands of those 
whose residence is American, but whose 
hearts and sympathies are foreign. 

Whatever protestations Mr. Hughes may 
make, these truths pursue and destroy him ; 
he is the candidate of the high finance that 
seeks control of the army and the navy in 
order to work out its dream of empire ; he 
is the candidate of the great usurers who 



''Anything to Beat Wilson" 145 

hate the Federal Reserve Law and desire 
its repeal ; lie is the candidate of the greedy 
forces that seek the abolition of the sea- 
men ^s bill, rural credits legislation, and the 
reenactment of the old Payne-Aldrich 
tariff law; he is the candidate of the 
Kaiser ; he is the candidate of Toryism and 
reaction. It is millions drawn from these 
sources that will finance his campaign; it 
is the votes of these sinister forces that he 
will receive; it is their interests that will 
dominate in event of his election. 

In no particular is there reason to be- 
lieve that his choice was any blind selec- 
tion. His speech of acceptance, robbed of 
its sound and fury, was bitter in its par- 
tizanship, adroit in its evasions, and ab- 
solutely barren of constructive suggestions 
and announced policies. One searches 
vainly through its platitudes and generali- 
ties for a single specific statement with 
reference to the fundamental issues. 
Quarreling broadly, even meanly, with 
President Wilson, in no instance does he 
state what he himself would have done or 



146 Wilson and the Issues 

what he intends to do. His references to 
Mexico intimate war and conquest ; his at- 
tack upon faithful ambassadors like Mor- 
genthau, Whitlock, Page, Van Dyke, and 
Sharp indicates dollar diplomacy; while 
loud in advocacy of ^* undiluted American- 
ism,'' he avoids all mention of the German 
conspiracy, and his insistence that present 
prosperity is only temporary insinuates an 
attack upon the Wilson laws, yet never does 
he come out squarely and courageously. 
Such adroitness, such egg-dancing, carry 
ugly implications, and these are strength- 
ened by a small, yet vastly significant, 
thing. In telegraphing Governor Johnson, 
*'I desire a reunited party,'' Mr. Hughes 
betrays utter inability to grasp Progres- 
sivism as a spiritual revolt, viewing it only 
as the expression of a peevish factionalism. 
His disingenuousness, however, only 
serves to accentuate the issue: Must a 
President of the United States, in order to 
win election, take his foreign policy from 
Berlin and his domestic policy from Wall 
Street? 



CHAPTER X 

THE ANCIENT FAITH 

AMERICA is a nation of incurable 
dreamers. The heart of the people 
is not found in ledgers, their aspirations 
are not expressed in profits, and never at 
any time have schemes of purely material 
advancement possessed the largest appeal. 
The soul of the many is found in the 
far-flung idealism of the Declaration of 
Independence, not in the cautious phrases 
of the Constitution. False prophets and 
strange gods have won no more than lip- 
service, for deep in the heart of the nation 
an abiding faith in the ultimate triumph 
of love, justice, and brotherhood remains 
untouched. Financial genius may be given 
its sorry day of homage, yet its right to 
control the destinies of America has never 

147 



148 Wilson and the Issues 

failed to be resisted, and the great money- 
makers do not live in memory beyond the 
reading of their wills. 

Vision, spirit, ideals, without the clue 
afforded by these dream words, the United 
States stammers and is unintelligible. 
Democracy never has been, and never can 
be, other than a theory of spiritual prog- 
ress, and those who view it as a mere pro- 
gram of materialism place their feet in a 
blind path. The slightest study of human 
progress makes plain that the things which 
count in the evolution of civilization to 
higher levels are ever and always those 
flames of the spirit that blaze without re- 
gard to intellectual formulas or certain- 
ties of profit. 

When has greed ever entertained the 
visions that turned arid wastes into smil- 
ing orchards, spun steel gossamer across 
dizzy chasms, sent air-ships aloft, or has 
given new lands to the foot of civilization? 
When did the multiplication-table mind 
ever free a captive, crush an evil, liberate 
justice, or bless the world with a larger hap- 



The Ancient Faith 149 

piness? All that is fundamentally big and 
fine has been the work of so-called * Vision- 
aries" who ran gantlets of ridicule and op- 
position. In the outset every great move- 
ment, every wonderful idea, is a dream, 
and democracy was evolved to make these 
dreams come true. 

It may not be denied that almost from 
the first these truths have been challenged 
with persistency and skill. A base and de- 
structive sordidness, masquerading as prac- 
ticality, has been offered as a substitute for 
the sublime abstractions that Jefferson 
molded into form, and derision has been 
trained constantly upon everything that 
could not be handled by adding-machines. 
A commercial aristocracy, by sinister con- 
trol of government, press, and pulpit, has 
been able to cast the surface of things in 
shapes of its own desire, and it is only in 
spasms of revolt that the real thought and 
purpose of the great mass of people have 
gained expression. 

It is this spirit of revolt that Woodrow 
Wilson has quickened and strengthened; 



150 Wilson and the Issues 

it is this spirit of revolt that the profit- 
mongers have determined to crush once and 
forever. It is the crime of the President 
that he has dared to stand with the ex- 
ploited many against the powerful few, 
leading the fight of the people against their 
ancient enemies for the recovery of the 
ancient faith. They hate him for his ac- 
tivities, but most of all, they hate him for 
the courage of his thought. He has not 
been afraid to cry out against the sham 
*' practicality '^ that was slowly destroy- 
ing the creative genius of the American 
people. He has battled for the release of 
the national mind from its slavery to un- 
relieved materialism, and striven to restore 
idealism to its proper place in American 
life. Victory for this man means victory 
for democracy ; it is to beat democracy back 
into bondage that he is being fought by the 
great money lords. 

Woodrow Wilson is in no sense a her- 
ald. The revolution of betrayed idealism 
has been in progress for more than a cen- 
tury, and in the last decade particularly 



The Ancient Faith 151 

there has been steady assault upon evil and 
outworn institutions. These passionate 
gropings of the spirit in the direction of 
ideals professed and not practised have 
merely lacked great leadership and au- 
thoritative expression. This is what 
Woodrow Wilson gives. He comes as a 
leader, as a nucleating force, as a clear, 
rallying cry to the almost mystic passions 
that are peculiarly the dominant note of 
the day. He fits the need of the bloodless 
revolution as skin fits the hand, bringing 
purpose and courage to the struggle for 
nobler fulfilment of the hopes and aspira- 
tions that thrilled those who first sought 
refuge in the New World from the op- 
pressions of the Old — the struggle for real 
democracy. 

*^It has been common," said the late 
Justice Miller, *'to designate our form of 
government as a democracy, but in the 
true sense in which that word is properly 
used it is about as far from it as any other 
of which we are aware. * ' 

The answer to the dreams of freedom 



152 Wilson and the Issues 

of the original colonists was found in the 
London Company, three times chartered 
to take over the lands and resources of 
Virginia, in the Dutch West Indies Com- 
pany, which foisted the patroon system on 
the New Netherlands, and in the Ply- 
mouth Company of New England, all breed- 
ing a landholding aristocracy that repeated 
and exaggerated the feudalism of Europe. 

The Declaration of Independence, sub- 
lime preface to a victorious rebellion, 
brought a new joy and certainty to the 
land; and yet when democracy seemed an 
assured fact, old chains were riveted anew. 
With the return of peace, Tories and Loy- 
alists came running from their hiding- 
places, and aided by reaction, the wealthy 
classes soon regained their former power. 

The men chosen as delegates to the Con- 
stitutional Convention were drawn entirely 
from the aristocratic, landholding class, 
and though scarcely eleven years had 
passed since the Declaration, only six of 
the fifty-six men who signed it were mem- 
bers of the Convention. 



The Ancient Faith 153 

James Madison felt that ^^the minority 
of the opulent must be protected against 
the majority. The Constitution ought to 
secure the permanent interests of the coun- 
try against innovation/' 

Said Gouverneur Morris: ^^The first 
branch, originating from the people, will 
ever be subject to precipitancy, changeabil- 
ity and excess. This can only be changed 
by ability and virtue in the second branch, 
which ought to be composed of men of 
great and established property — aristoc- 
racy; men who, from pride, will support 
consistency and permanency, and to make 
them completely independent, they must 
be chosen for life, or they will be a use- 
less body." 

Property qualifications robbed the great 
majority of the right to vote and to hold 
office. In Massachusetts no man could be 
governor unless possessed of $5000; North 
Carolina required $5000 in freehold real 
estate; and Georgia went further with a 
requisite of $20,000 and five hundred acres. 

The iron test of the democratic spirit of 



154 Wilson and the Issues 

America is amazingly exhibited in the suc- 
cessful struggle against these odds. 
Armed only with the dynamic power of a 
beUef , the people marched doggedly to their 
goal, although it was not until 1846 that the 
Constitutional Convention of New York 
crowned full manhood suffrage by specific 
inhibition of feudal tenures. 

The abolition of chattel slavery, carry- 
ing with it a final perfection of union, 
again gave ground for the old pride and 
certainty ; but out of the vast changes— the 
growth of cities, the sweep of railroads, 
the dawn of industrialism — there stole an- 
other, and in many respects, a greater 
menace. Ideals were swallowed up in a 
very madness of money-making : practical- 
ity, in the sense of profit earning, became 
a fetish, business a god; quickly, almost 
without opposition, the control of govern- 
ment was turned over to the financial in- 
terests of the country. 

It is contended that the Eoosevelt ad- 
ministration ushered in a new order, and 
in a certain sense this is true. He denied 



The Ancient Faith 155 

the established assumption that great mag- 
nates could do no wrong, and with his cry 
of ''personal guilt" aroused the conscience 
of the people to fever-heat. There is no 
intent to take away from the value of his 
services, and yet his activities, although 
honest, were essentially oligarchic and 
miles removed from an understanding of 
democracy. 

Mr. Eoosevelt differed from his prede- 
cessors only in that he demanded punish- 
ment for the evil-doers of special privilege. 
It was not the system with which he quar- 
reled, but with individual malefactors. 
Under analysis he is seen to believe in 
control, not freedom, and in protection 
rather than in the abolition of the evils 
that necessitate protection. 

His intent was to do good for the people, 
according to his own ideas of good, rather 
than to let people do good for themselves 
according to their ideas. It cannot be 
found that he dissented fundamentally 
from the bland theory that all intelligence 
is vested in a choice few or that prosper- 



156 Wilson and the Issues 

ity is a class product, and from the first 
he betrayed a f eehng that the radical move- 
ment is the pet property of high-minded 
lords of the manor with leisure on their 
hands. 

As a matter of fact, there is every 
ground for the assertion that Mr. Eoose- 
velt's contributions to the cause of democ- 
racy were far less important than those of 
Mr. Taft. Where the former worked in 
kaleidoscopic colors, the latter 's effects 
were in unrelieved black and white. Mr. 
Taft 's belief in the necessity and virtue of 
a ruling class was religious in its fervor, 
and in no wise did he attempt to hide it or 
confuse it. As a consequence, he provoked 
conflicts, challenged comparisons, gloried 
in solemn asseverations of his faith, all to 
the end that the battle-lines were clearly 
drawn. Mr. Eoosevelt colored and ob- 
scured the aristocratic features of Ameri- 
can life; Mr. Taft isolated them so per- 
fectly that the hour of revolt was hastened 
immeasurably. Both of them, in their dif- 



The Ancient Faith 157 

ferent ways, paved the way for Woodrow 
Wilson. 

Let it be said again that not since Lin- 
coln, not since JetTerson, has any man so 
felt and expressed the passionate idealism 
that is the sonl of America. To a revolt 
that was vague and sporadic he brought 
no beggarly contributions of expediency 
and opportunism, but the clear, inspiring 
certainties of a lifetime. 

As far back as 1879 we find him pro- 
testing in signed articles against secrecy in 
connection with governmental affairs, cry- 
ing out with all a young man's fervor 
against the secret committees of congress, 
which invited evil and corruption. Dur- 
ing his student days in Princeton he is seen 
relinquishing a desired prize well within 
his grasp because he would not, even in 
scholastic debate, advance arguments in 
support of what he deemed an oligarchic 
theory. 

Nor can too much be made of his fight 
for the democratization of the university 



158 Wilson and the Issues 

during the days when he held the presi- 
dency; for although the field was small, 
the issues involved were those fundamen- 
tals that bedrock the nation. For those 
who may have been led into the belief that 
the Wilson brand of democracy is a recent 
product, born of political expediency, a 
reading is recommended to those speeches 
in which he fought the tendency to glorify 
money, scourged the drift to plutocracy, 
and earned the hatred of a class that at- 
tacked him as a ^^ socialist," a * Reveler," 
and a ^^confiscator.'' 

In his books and speeches liberty and 
progress are favorite words, and every ut- 
terance, written or spoken, breathes a 
mighty faith in the oneness of the Ameri- 
can people when an end is put to the falsi- 
ties and inequalities that compel oppres- 
sion and breed hate. 

It is indeed unfortunate that the poli- 
tics of the past have not been of a kind to 
make for more general and accurate un- 
derstanding of the true Wilson personal- 
ity. Out of the hackneyed descriptive — 



The Ancient Faith 159 

*'the common people" — there has grown a 
tradition that commonness is the one 
proper method of popular appeal. It is an 
actual habit of many so-called statesmen 
to prepare for campaigns as though they 
were mummers about to play some rustic 
part calling for uncouth dress and speech. 
This species of vulgar charlatanism has 
confused democracy with mere physical 
boisterousness, and in many minds there is 
insistence upon hand-shaking, shoulder- 
clapping, and ability to remember first 
names as the real democratic tests. 

Woodrow Wilson is an embodied dis- 
sent to this wretched superstition. Even 
did his temperament not preclude the 
tricks and obvious insincerities of the poli- 
tician type, he has too exalted an appre- 
ciation of public service to betray it by 
time-squandering activities designed only 
to advance his own popularity. Instead 
of wasting effort on the accepted formu- 
las of campaign democracy, he is giving his 
days, his thought, and his strength to real 
democracy. Few Presidents have had 



160 Wilson and the Issues 

such full comprehension of the solemn re- 
sponsibilities imposed by the highest office 
in the gift of the people, and few indeed 
have made such complete surrender of pri- 
vate life — its habits and pleasures — to the 
imperative demands of public duty. 

It is a matter of frequent comment that 
he has few friends. What is this but rec- 
ognition of the bitter truth that friendship 
is the great American conspiracy in re- 
straint of public duty 1 Who can have for- 
gotten the malignant attacks upon Joseph 
W. Folk because he dared to prosecute the 
criminals who had aided in securing his 
nomination? Who doubts that where one 
strong man is true to his oath, scores have 
permitted the specious obligations of care- 
lessly formed friendships to tie their hands 
and bridle their tongues? Affection is a 
guide that has led many honest, sincere men 
into byways of broken faith and virtual 
dishonor. 

There is no warrant in fact for the in- 
sinuation that Woodrow Wilson is *^cold.'' 
His student days, his professorial years, 



The Ancient Faith 161 

the whole record of his life up to his en- 
trance into political life, all proclaim a 
man of warm feeling, much emotionalism, 
and most winning geniality. Nobody ever 
sang a better song, told a better story, or 
placed higher value upon the joys of social 
intercourse. The insistence that he is the 
last word in well-ordered intellect, a per- 
sonality as cold and remote as though 
Kant's ^'Critique of Pure Season" were 
galvanized into action, is the stupidity of 
muddlers who have lost all touch with the 
elemental simplicities. As one follows the 
man from his entrance into public life, the 
*' thinking-machine " theory becomes in- 
creasingly absurd, for at every point there 
is plain indication of white-heat passion, 
and indubitable evidence of an instinctive 
devotion to democratic ideals far more 
dominating than the mere convictions that 
proceed from conscious thought. 

It is not only to conserve his time and 
his energies that he has' walled himself in, 
but more particularly to guard himself 
against his warmths and his impulses. 



162 Wilson and the Issues 

The man himself is not changed; it is his 
position that has changed. This isolation, 
of which there has been complaint, is the 
iron determination of Woodrow Wilson, 
not his temperamental expression. His 
loneliness has its private deprivations, but 
these are balanced by public compensations. 
In his administration no conditions can 
arise where policies, striking against in- 
timacies, will be turned aside. 

Such a President must necessarily be 
somewhat contradictory to those whose 
conception of democracy has been gained 
from professional office-seekers, and such 
as had been led to expect a *^feet-on-the- 
desk'' administration by Woodrow Wil- 
son's campaign insistence on ^^open 
doors.'' A more exact comprehension of 
the man himself is dawning, however, and 
out of final appreciation the country may 
gain a new political type as rich in dignity, 
self-respect, and loyalty as the old type was 
fawning, standardless, and time-wasting. 

A new day has dawned in American life, 
and anything may be asked of its noon. 



The Ancient Faith 163 

The conception of government as a sov- 
ereign power, aloof, remote, magisterial, 
is being rapidly replaced by a demand that 
government shall take its place in the world 
of work, sustaining and supplementing the 
generous energies that are putting equal 
justice into law, abolishing slums, substi- 
tuting opportunity for almsgiving, water- 
ing deserts, and harnessing streams, safe- 
guarding the weak, devising plans for a 
fairer distribution of the products of labor, 
and taking some of the hate and cruelty out 
of life. It is the new practicality. 

At the close of the Taft administration 
it was said truly that America witnessed a 
race between reformation and revolution. 
Woodrow Wilson has won the victory for 
reformation, and stands to-day as a firmer 
champion of law and order than any of 
those who oppose and attack him in de- 
fense of indefensible privileges. He has 
made it possible to achieve inevitable re- 
adjustments in true sanity and safety, for 
in leading people back to ancient ideals he 
has led them away from the violences that. 



164 Wilson and the Issues 

bred by materialism, would have been em- 
ployed in the destruction of materialism. 

It is not legitimate business that he has 
fought, but ** loaded dice" business; it is 
not enterprise that he has sought to curb, 
but criminal rapacity. As never before in 
the history of the United States, honest, 
law-abiding industry and adventure are 
aided, advanced, and protected; complaint 
can come in fairness only from the forces 
of lawless greed. 

His foreign policies, no less than his 
domestic policies, are the decisions of one 
wdth vision to see beneath the stagnancies 
of materialism down to the well-springs of 
truth. It has been his high privilege to 
prove that wholesale blood-letting is not 
the only solution of international disputes, 
or the single effective manner of consum- 
mating desires deeply rooted in justice. 
Purity of purpose is seen to possess com- 
pulsion as well as battalions, and frater- 
nity has been recognized as a force no less 
than siege-guns. 

The fallacy that countries and flags must 



The Ancient Faith 165 

compel respect is displaced by the better 
conception that respect is a thing to be 
earned, and there is final understanding 
that hurt to a nation's honor comes always 
from within, never from without. 

The inherited and cherished fetish that 
international relations are inescapably hos- 
tile, because the success of one country 
inevitably entails the injury of the other, 
has gone the way of witchcraft, and a new 
national pride is beginning to put emphasis 
upon leadership in justice rather than in 
bullying exhibitions of brute strength. 

Across the sea the youth and flower of 
great races are being rushed to death. 
Millions of precious lives, rich in possi- 
bilities of creation and production, are be- 
ing blown away on the winds of a vast 
destruction, and the march of human prog- 
ress ends in bloody trenches. In the red 
light that streams from this death-grapple 
it has become possible for the people of 
America to see clearly old paths and new 
roads, to mark the abysses that have been 
edged and the heights that may be gained. 



166 Wilson and the Issues 

The policies tliat ** shamed" the United 
States are increasingly recognized as 
fundamental truths to which there will be 
universal repair in the time when war- 
wrecked nations gather to remold their 
shattered destinies. The racial mixture 
that is America may quiver with sympathy 
for those blood-brothers who go to death 
on European battle-fields, yet the domi- 
nant thrill is one of national pride in the 
demonstrated supremacy of American in- 
stitutions and ideals. Idealism, so derided 
in the beginning, has saved the national 
purse, conserved the national energies, de- 
stroyed national evils, and given us confi- 
dence in ourselves, besides inspiring and 
deserving the confidence of others. A 
people manumitted and facing the heights, 
a nation admired of the world and re- 
spected, its material interests bedrocked in 
international friendships — against these 
tangible, demonstrable benefits, how unut- 
terably shabby stand the returns that were 
promised by the sordid, destructive pro- 
gram of the so-called practicality that has 



The Ancient Faith 167 

been imposing its vicious doctrines upon 
the United States for so long a time! 

Are these hard-won heights to be aban- 
doned? In its hour of greatest hope, is 
democracy to surrender? Are the people 
of the United States so lost to the spirit of 
Henry and Jefferson and Lincoln that they 
prefer chains to freedom? Is it possible 
to build a government of the people, by the 
people, and for the people, or must human- 
ity, by reason of its own stupidities, blind- 
nesses, incapacities, and cowardice yield 
inevitably to the rule of the self-selected 
few? 

These, after all, are the questions to be 
answered in November. 



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